Hurricane Season

Class Five hurricanes are not to be trifled with even when you live inland, out of the evacuation zone, or even when your home is located in the area where the evacuees seek shelter. Roger was well aware of this and had carefully prepared for hurricane season. The disastrous hurricane season of 2004 followed by monsters in 2005 and 2006 had taught him his lesson. Still, with most of his family remaining up north, he tried to keep a level head about all this.

He had issued his family the following guidelines to assure them that he really did have a handle on all this:

Tropical Storm or lower: The typical Central Florida summer thunderstorm can pack wind gusts as intense as a tropical storm. Therefore, no unusual action needs to be taken. The barbecue can stay outside. Steak and potatoes are a good choice.

Category 1: Winds of 74-95 mph: Secure the items on the patio. Locate and deploy candles and emergency lights. Verify that all the gas tanks are filled, including the barbecue grill tanks. Rotisserie chicken with rice is a good choice. Otherwise, it’s business as usual.

Category 2: Winds of 96-110 mph: All the above plus roll down the storm shutters. Freeze containers with water to make ice. Move the barbecue onto the patio and cook something that will last for two or three days. Roast beef is a good choice. The wind blowing across the patio will keep you from asphyxiating yourself. Minimize your time outdoors.

Category 3: Winds of 111-129 mph: Verify all the above. Move the cars to the space between the houses to protect them from blown tree limbs. Cover the cars with tarps. Move the patio furniture inside. Secure the barbecue grill. Stock up on prepared foods. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches may be a good idea. Hunker down and wait it out.

Category 4: Winds of 130-156 mph: Verify all of the above. Pack up and drive out of town. Expect to be gone for at least a week. Pack a cooler with food for the long drive.

Category 5: Winds exceeding 157 mph: Verify all the above. At the earliest indication of a potential direct hit, buy an airplane ticket and get out of Dodge.

This was a small dangerous storm. The storm system had raced across the Atlantic from Africa, looped south around most of the Caribbean without making landfall, and made a beeline for Key West. Having spent its entire short life over hot tropical waters, it had avoided the pitfall that befell many storms and did not splatter its energy against the islands. Not that the people on those islands minded, but they understood precisely what was in store for whoever this storm hit. Tightly wrapped, the hurricane packed class five winds for much of its time over the water. If there had been a class six designation based solely on its wind speed, this storm would have been class six. It was not as wet as some other storms, but the wind was the real threat.

Key West and the rest of the Keys suffered horrific damage. The storm surge was over ten feet. Coming ashore at high tide, it uprooted everything in its path. An unusual number of people, citing “personal liberty,” elected to stay in place, and the death toll exceeded anything in recent memory.

Roger watched the storm’s progress with concern. The majority of the forecasters predicted that the storm would cross the Gulf of Mexico, pick up strength and clobber Texas. It was still far enough away that the local airports were open, although everything south of Miami, Dade County had theoretically been evacuated. The entire Texas Gulf Coast, for a distance inland of twenty miles inland, was ordered to prepare for a potential evacuation.

Roger watched the NOAA forecasts and recognized a pattern he had seen before. The “spaghetti models” were rarely as divergent as they were with this storm. This time three lines diverged sharply from the consensus as they had the last time Roger had dealt with a significant storm. Only one forecaster at a television station in Orlando had correctly predicted the path of that storm almost twenty years ago. He disagreed with the majority and warned that this storm would make a sharp right turn and come ashore at Fort Myers. It would then cross Florida and emerge near Jacksonville.

The storm stalled over the gulf as the lone forecaster Roger trusted said it might. After much screaming and shouting, Roger packed up his wife and put her on an airplane to wait out the storm with her sister up north. There was a time when he would not have minded sitting out a storm with her at an interior corridor of their house, reading their e-readers, listening to the roof flex over their heads as it had the last time almost twenty years ago, but those days were gone. He still had work to do to get ready for the storm.

Twelve hours after Roger’s wife arrived at her sister’s house, NOAA announced that the storm had turned and was now expected to make landfall near St. Petersburg, Florida. It was then expected to track northeast across Central Florida following Interstate 4 and exit the state at Daytona. This was the exact path the lone forecaster out of Orlando and the three divergent “spaghetti models” had predicted. Mandatory evacuation orders were issued for Florida’s west coast for everything south of Tampa.

It was time for Roger to pack up and head for the airport, except that all the flights out were full.

Roger was not overly upset that he could not fly out ahead of the storm. However, he was left with a decision. Did he drive the SUV, which had a four hundred mile range and which his wife would prefer to ride home in, or should he drive the hybrid with a six hundred mile range which would be more stable in the wind?

Roger was not as unhappy as others might have been under the circumstances. As he debated, he called the Auto-Train to secure tickets headed north, but like the airlines, they were full. A twenty-hour drive, all by himself, was not the worst idea in the world. He could turn off the radio and devote his attention to staying on the road. Not too shabby, to his way of thinking. He decided to take the hybrid. He had filled the tank the day before yesterday, and since he would be in stop-and-go traffic most of the way, the hybrid was the best choice.

Roger loaded his suitcases into the car and opened his mapping software to choose his best route out of town. He saw the flashing crash symbol on the Saint Johns River bridge and the long bright red lines extending on either side of it and knew that there was no good way out of town. The alternate routes would be no better than the highways. Even that wasn’t the end of the world. He had enough beer in the fridge and food that did not need to be cooked that he would be fine stretched out on the floor in the center of the house. He carried the suitcases back into the house.

In most of the counties in the direct path of the hurricane, county officials announced that they were withdrawing first responders to safe locations. Anyone who had ignored evacuation orders was on their own until after the storm passed.

The final tie on the last tarp covering the cars had been secured when Roger’s neighbor, Chuck, approached him. “Hey, do you still have that plywood you used to use before you installed those shutters?”

“Yeah, I was too lazy to drag it down from the attic and throw it out.”

“May I borrow it?”

“Certainly, if you promise to never bring it back.”

“It’s a deal.”

Chuck and Roger dragged the plywood out of the attic and across the street to Chuck’s house.

“Did your wife leave yet?” Chuck asked.

“Yes, she’s with her sister up north. Did your wife and kids get out?”

“They left yesterday afternoon. She drove all night and slept in the car at a rest area. They stopped for lunch and were about to hit the road again. She was so tired she almost let our son drive even though he’s underage. I guess they have another two hours to go. The kids have been good with helping keep her awake.”

“That just leaves us. I’m good with that.”

Roger and Chuck boarded up Chuck’s house as the sky progressively darkened. Part of the darkening was from the clouds, but dusk was approaching, and the sense of foreboding was overwhelming. After Roger and Chuck finished boarding up the house and securing what could be secured, Chuck asked, “Do you know if Anita got out?”

“I don’t,” Roger said. “I heard Sergio died of COVID last week. Do you know how she’s taking it?”

“I don’t. We should probably check on her.”

“I can’t imagine she’s taking it well,” Roger said.

“Did you hear the fight after she got vaccinated and he refused?”

“I did. They were screaming so loud I could hear them in my yard.”

“I thought she was going to leave him over it.”

“I did, too. I guess it doesn’t matter anymore.”

“I agree. I mean, we all got vaccinated as soon as we could.”

“We did too.”

Anita sat at the wheel of her car sobbing. The garage and the front door were standing open.

Chuck reached through the wheel to push the button shutting down the car’s engine. “Where were you going?”

Anita did not answer. She rested her head on her arms and sobbed louder.

Roger noticed that the parts for Anita’s storm shutters were still stacked in the corner of her garage. “Anita, we need to get the storm shutters up before it’s too late.”

“I don’t know how!” She wailed. “Sergio always did it.”

Chuck sighed and said, “Get out of the car. It will take all three of us to finish before the storm.”

Roger asked, “Where are Sergio’s tools?”

Anita pointed to a large toolbox of the type often found in auto repair shops against the far wall next to a workbench. Roger opened the top drawer. “I knew Sergio was a neat freak, but this is incredible.”

Anita looked back and forth between the two men. Her tears started to dry. She realized what Chuck had done. He did not want to deal with whatever she was upset about, so he distracted her. “Dammit, Chuck, you are such a GUY!”

Chuck laughed. “Guilty as charged.”

Chuck, Roger, and Anita dragged the parts from the garage and assembled them to protect the windows. While Roger had installed the roll-down type of storm shutter, Sergio installed the window covering panels that slid into a track. The advantage of the panels was that they were clear instead of being opaque like the roll-down shutters. This meant that light came through the panels to the windows beyond without sacrificing protection.

The rain had begun to fall heavily by the time they were finished. Winds had been whipping around them for over an hour which made installing the panels difficult.

They were soaked. Anita said, “Look, we can weather this storm alone in our own houses, or we can do it together. I have the largest house, and Sergio just bought a generator I don’t know how to run. Why don’t you go home, gather clothes for a couple of days, bring some beer or wine, and we’ll make it a party.”

So, that’s what they did.

Roger’s kids were all grown and gone, but he still had a pile of old board games from their childhood. He emptied the beer from his fridge. He called his wife from the house phone to tell her that he was not coming. She was not happy. She was less than thrilled that he and Chuck would be riding out the storm at Anita’s.

Chuck brought enough snacks for a small army. They started laughing and drinking even before the last of the bags were unpacked. They set up camp on the floor in the corridor next to the bathroom and spent most of the duration of the storm playing board games. They got up to use the bathroom, get supplies from the kitchen, and slept on the floor. The hurricane’s eye passed over them, and in the ten minutes of calm it offered, they raced outside and fired up the generator. It worked. Thrilled that they could read the directions in their inebriated state, they shut it down and went back inside.

Once the storm ended, the hangovers had subsided, and the airports reopened, Anita drove Roger and Chuck to the airport to join their wives. As she prepared to drop them off, Anita said, “When you found me, I was going to drive my car as fast as I could down the boat ramp next to the marina as soon as the winds picked up. Thank you for saving my life.”