Hurricanes and Such

Tropical Storm Patricia barreled down on the Baja Peninsula this weekend with 60 mph winds. Sometimes these storms turn into hurricanes, and wreak even more havoc than their juvenile selves 24 hours prior.

What about those hurricanes? Anyone been in one?

I have: Hurricane Gloria, Long Island, in 1985.

What was it like, you wonder? Well, you're asking a girl from Tornado Alley, Oklahoma. (Who now lives in rural Kansas, I might add.) Hurricane Gloria had hammered on the Bahamas, but then weakened as she continued up the Atlantic Coast to N. Carolina. When she made second landfall on Long Island, NY, I was there, twiddling my thumbs in wait. My parents had told me the night before to evacuate LI, but I opted to wait it out, and by the time their parental opinions came in loud and clear a second time, it was too late anyway: the LI Expressway was packed with evacuees and not moving.

A hurricane is different from the tornadoes that I have grown up to know and fear. Hurricanes give warnings. Let me rephrase that: the National Hurricane Center and all the news channels and webpages and whatnot give warnings: hours and even days of warnings. Tornadoes? Holy mackerel, if you have enough time to grab a pet and a flashlight, you're Okie-Dokie and lucky.

So I awoke that morning of the hurricane, expecting some really bad experience. Outside, the wind was blowing pretty strongly, and the rain was falling quite heavily. That's it. Later in the morning, the wind and the rain picked up. It was like any really, really, really heavy and windy Oklahoma rainstorm. At about noon, the newscasters came on to say that the eye of Hurricane Gloria was nearly over us on Long Island. "Don't get complacent!! The worst is yet to come!!"

The rain stopped. There was no wind. The atmosphere had an unnatural weird very golden glow to it. I was in the eye of the storm. This was so fascinating to me, and it is difficult for me to describe the atmosphere. The newscasters were telling us not to go out! Not to get complacent! The worst was coming! Don't go outdoors!

I went outdoors. It was indeed eery. The atmosphere was silent. No rain, no wind, no birds, no nothing. Just that golden cast of light...one could almost imagine the sun trying to peek through a cover of thick mist thousands of feet above in the sky; but there was no sun or sunlight; just that golden hue.

About a half hour later, the storm picked up again, with as much and then more vengeance as it had not only four hours previous.

This afternoon part of the day did indeed feel like tornadic weather. But it didn't pass with the sound of a train after a few minutes, it just kept pounding, for hours. I did not like the wind, and I found myself missing those mid-America cellars and basements. A few hours of wind and rain and more and more wind. And then, it stopped.

I ventured outside to find trees uprooted and some damage around the neighborhood - nothing like the fierce 2005 Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, but enough that the blocks I walked looked haggard and windtorn.

And so felt I.