Not So Happy Hurricane Season

 

Image credit: The Weather Channel

As Beryl barrels towards The Gulf of Mexico, those of us in my area are basically Craps dice-shooters shouting, "Come On Yucatan Peninsula!" and waiting for the dice to land; hoping upon hope we won this toss.

I know that's a terrible thing to say; wishing a storm on anyone. Because I really don't want them to get it so much as I don't want to get it here. And, as per The Weather Channel's picture above, today's cone of uncertainty means Beryl is potentially heading our way. It'd be wonderful if it just died in the Gulf.

In 2008, I went through Hurricane Ike. My ex, our son and the cat evacuated after boarding up the house, cutting all power to it, and making sure all vehicles and electronics were up high just in case. We left in a near panic as we were mandated to do, and upon returning home over a day later, found that we had one broken tree limb at the back fence line and the milk in the fridge hadn't gone bad. I had no idea how blessed we'd been. 

I had come from an area that didn't get hurricanes very often (NJ), went to one that didn't get them at all (CA), and I'd now come through one in Texas with such little damage that I couldn't even comprehend what a severe hurricane could do.

But after 2017's Hurricane Harvey literally turned my home (at the time) into an island - no exaggeration, I'm not looking to do any other hurricanes ever again ahhhthankyouvurymuch. 

During Harvey (in the days before and for a few days after), every business that wasn't a gas station on higher elevation shut down. Everyone else in our neighborhood and the surrounding area evacuated. Our teenaged children bugged out to various friends' houses - in other words, evacuated.

My Man and I assessed and prayed, and we stayed put (affectionately known in Texas as 'hunkering down in place'). We only lost power because it was turned off by the power company due to the safety hazard of severe flooding in the area. We were powerless for a couple of days. In a lot of areas it was weeks. 

As I said earlier, we were literally an island. 45 miles from the coast we looked like we were the coast. 30 yards in every direction was water. I could barely comprehend the scene before me, let alone have imagined it before hand. And yet, somehow, we were completely calm and just rolled with the events as they unfolded.

We built a massive outdoor light that my son later dubbed 'the Walmart light' due to it's height and brightness, and we hooked it up to a generator to light our solitary corner of the world. We made breakfast the next morning in cast iron on the barbeque pit while calling family members to assure them of our survival. We were so grateful that we told everyone we spoke to how highly blessed and favored our situation was as rescue workers were launching their shallow-bottom boats from the side street next to our 'island' house. 

Eventually, My Man was able to make his way to civilization and came across nearly 100 rescue workers from ALL OVER! Some from other areas of Texas and many from out of state. They had battled all of the storm conditions to show up and help our little, thoroughly devastated area and had congregated at our local truck stop since it was on the highest ground.

The truck stop, in addition to the mini-mart section, has two restaurants inside. However, McDonald's, the larger of the two restaurants, had been shut down in preparation of the storm; and the smaller restaurant, Chester's, couldn't accommodate that many orders or people. Our rescuers were without food, which may be common for them due to disaster condition protocols. But My Man had talked to several of the rescuers about how far they'd come as he thanked everyone he spoke to for coming, and their inability to get fed did not sit well with him in the slightest.   

So he calls me at the house and asked me to reach out to the community via Facebook (he doesn't do social media) to see what I could do. I had no idea what my posting could do because I'm not very FB popular locally, but I made a public post and prayed that it would reach somebody, anybody who could help these people. 

By the Grace of God, it got the ball rolling, and the community came through in spades!

 One person tagged another person until the whole county knew what was going on! And despite their own hardships, every team member from that McDonald's who was able to make it to the store showed up. And they got to work until all of those amazing, imported God's Angels! people were fed. 

Pictures were taken with rescue workers and McDonalds employees. Laughter was had by most, if not all. And healing began despite the massive amount of work still to be done in the recovery effort. We didn't know it at the time, but we were all truly changed forever. 

I have never been so humbled to be involved, so proud of any group of people (My Man and the McD's employees) or so grateful to another group (all of the rescue workers) in my life.

Harvey had taken Wharton County, and it had not been kind. But we were still standing; somewhat disheveled, yet proud survivors of the assault with our hospitality in tact. I wonder what Horton Foote would have written about his hometown after that.

Seven years later, the residents of Wharton County approach Hurricane Season with a mix of cockiness (nothing will be worse than Harvey) and underlying concern (but what if it's worse than Harvey). Understandably, we're all grateful anytime the weather is less powerful than predicted; even if we act like we knew it would be.

Now this week, here comes Beryl all over the news reports because it had become a Category 5 storm. So, even people without regular tv service (such as us) are hearing about it everywhere in Texas. 

Did I mention, they only added a Category 5 as of this year? Ya know, just a side note tidbit for those of you unfamiliar with hurricanes.

It devastated Jamaica earlier today when it made landfall as a Category 4 storm just like Harvey did to us in 2017. 

God bless them each and every one! May your recovery be speedy and complete, Jamaica (and everywhere else it goes)! Amen!

 NOAA is predicting an unusually high number of hurricanes this year.

The family chat already contains weather reports, evacuation talk, and offers of places to stay if they're needed. We're hopeful that none of the offers will need to be exercised.

Good luck to us all this not so happy hurricane season.

Die Beryl, DIE!