Disturbance 1

Thursday's bulletin from the National Hurricane Center caught me slightly by surprise:

A non-tropical low pressure system is located about 800 miles east 
of Bermuda.  The low is expected to develop gale-force winds later 
today while it moves generally northward. The low is then forecast 
to move westward and southwestward over warmer waters tonight and 
Friday, and it will likely become a subtropical cyclone near and to 
the northeast of Bermuda on Friday. The system is expected to move 
toward the north and northeast into a more hostile environment by 
late Sunday into Monday. For more information on this developing low 
pressure area, please see High Seas forecasts issued by the NOAA 
Ocean Prediction Center and forecast products issued by the Bermuda 
Weather Service.
* Formation chance through 48 hours...high...70 percent.
* Formation chance through 5 days...high...90 percent.

Every it seems as though May a disturbance disturbs the North Atlantic and every year the feeling is one of wholesale rejection. This is normal, one storm does not a season predict and so forth. And yet the little voice wonders if Bermuda deserves to get clipped by a cyclone this early in the year. Now Bermuda and tomorrow...?

I was discussing my feelings this hurricane season with my wife and I told her that this is the first year I face summer storms with some trepidation. I overthink most things and in this case I suspect I am so close to ending my static relationship with hurricanes that I am gaining an unreasonable fear of getting whacked one last time.

In our first world of building codes and relative wealth hurricanes aren't perilous to life inasmuch as we get plenty of warning and buildings don't collapse on a whim. The 140 mile an hour winds of Hurricane Irma in 2017 caused plenty of damage everywhere but in the end 72 Floridians died and lots of them by neglect, the elderly condemned by power outages and no help.  That many are missing presumed dead in one shipwreck in India following a cyclone there this week.

Hurricanes cause disruptions, they ruin structures and economies, in vacation land evacuations are a nuisance. Survivors live in great discomfort if the hurricane spawned lots of tornadoes that tore everything up. Five days without water and weeks without electricity wore us down after Hurricane Irma. Meals Ready To Eat kept us going but it was a matter of surviving and plugging along.

Repairs take forever as there just aren't enough people and machines to put everything straight instantly. It's hard to sleep and tiring to think and boring to be stuck picking up trash all the time. It isn't deadly but it is dreary.

I have always accepted Hurricane Season as the price one pays, and our plans were simple. Schools close Layne and Rusty drive north, no hesitation, and they got out of the Irma traffic jam throughout Florida by arriving in Pensacola before the evacuations were even ordered. I sat alone at home cocooned by hurricane shutters pottering around putting the last few things away and hoping for the best. The house survived intact, but the trash piles and the rats and the smells impacted our neighborhoods for weeks.

Answering 911 calls and telling people in Monroe County there were no responders was harrowing, because when the storm arrived there was no help to be had, which is the reason for the evacuation orders. If you stay you are on your own and that is a horrid reality to face in a society where help is always to hand. You don't forget those moments.

I had hoped to sit this season out but staffing shortages make that unlikely. I want to store the van undercover somewhere on the mainland as the destruction of all our plans would break my heart. My wife is going to California in September and Rusty will spend any lockdown with people he knows and trusts as I can't keep him at the police station. 

These tedious calculations are the reality of life in the near tropics, and then when the National Hurricane Center wakes us up again the casual planning is made real. And Hurricane Season is supposed to run from June 1st to November 30th. As they are weather phenomena there are always outliers. 

Last year Webb Chiles who was planning a voyage noticed, because he watches weather closely, that hurricanes had developed a nasty new trick in these heated times, of becoming massively more powerful in very short order indeed. Today's Category One becomes tomorrow's Category Four with no warning.  That's a nice new wrinkle I shall have to keep my eye on. And with Disturbance One on the tracking map we shall have to start keeping an eye on the forecasts from now till December.

Heat

I think it's been about a week but recently the temperatures in Key West have hit 90 degrees and the humidity is unrelenting.  I am not one of those who prefers to live without air conditioning so by the simple expedient of going indoors for a bit, the  summer heat is made bearable. I read that the hottest cities thus far this year are in India which has been hitting temperatures over  120F ( 50C)  so far this year.  That may be  a taste of what's to come for all of us. 

Rusty gets his walk early in the morning and even then I get home drenched in sweat. There is a fresh east wind blowing across the keys, appropriate for the time of year, but even so it feels airless and  close despite the moving air. A paradox that leaves my shirt soaked like a used tea towel.

During the day it's too hot for a well found dog to be walking around so I wait till six o'clock for his evening walk, just as the sun starts to go down.

During the day he lounges around the house sleeping on the tiles on the kitchen floor alternating with periods outdoors sunbathing. With his own dog door he comes and goes as he pleases.

Through June 6th the State of Florida has created a tax holiday for disaster related supplies. It's a reminder to get ready for things to go wrong when the weather turns nasty. I don't suppose this will be enough to slow down the panicky race for supplies at the last minute when a storm approaches.

In the Middle of the peak of hurricane season Key West will have a new city manager, as of October  1st. At last week's city commission meeting the commissioners suddenly decided to turn a workshop discussing the replacement of the manager into an action item. Over the objections of the mayor and two commissioners the majority agreed to give the top job to the assistant city manager, Greg  Veliz. The mayor had wanted to conduct  a nationwide search but Veliz supporters insisted they probably wouldn't attract qualified candidates and the search would cost money. So, just like that  the vote came and the issue was settled, almost as an afterthought. The city of Key West never fails to astonish me.

The commission did suggest to itself that a search process should perhaps be created to enable a smooth transition for other city department heads who are expected to be retiring soon. It all seems rather vague though and traveling hopefully may be the way to go in this most interesting and unusual of cities.

I hope we can rely on a  serene hurricane season to give the new manager a  chance to get settled into the new job, though I expect he was paying attention during recent weather crises when he was assistant to the retiring manager. I hope he was watching how its done because, as the poet put it, "trying to reason reason with hurricane season" you can't run that pace for very long. Jimmy Buffett's words to live by if you are a neophyte manager learning to cope with the demands of storm season on an island in the stream.

Season For Storms

The rain came and went and more rain and wind followed and we had our first storm of the year. The National Hurricane Center called Alberto a "sub tropical storm" apparently something to do with how the winds formed into a cyclone. It was a bit too subtle for me. It spun, it produced strong winds and lots of rain and once again we found ourselves staring at a tropical storm display. Good enough.

60 mile per hour winds aren't that terrible if you aren't ina  tent or on a boat with a weak anchoring system. Yet the storm in the Western Caribbean had a disproportionately strong effect after the pasting we got from Hurricane irma and its 140 mph winds last September. This was a rain event:

The fact is the Atlantic Hurricane Season starts today and runs through November 30th. It is not unheard of storms to appear before and after those inflexible dates but it is unsettling when it happens. There was no fear of damage or death in Alberto's approach. The storm was more a reminder of what may yet be to come.

If you went through Irma last year you either evacuated and got frustrated you couldn't come home right away which was traumatic, or you stayed and watched the drama unfold in front of your eyes. Either way Iram left it's mark. No one wants that again yet an early season storm does not leave one feeling as though we might get through the summer unsscathed. Tropical or sub-tropical Alberto was viewed by many as a warning.

Some people couldn't take the tension and have left already. My wife mentioned a coupe of her acquaintances who packed up and went North. Over dinner Saturday night as winds outside the restaurant howled one of our friends said she couldn't take it anymore. Her husband insisted they aren't leaving the Keys but she looked very dubious.

My wife and I went to see the documentary on Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg listed only by her initials RBG... It was nice to see an obituary before the person in question is dead and she is very much alive at 84 and still happy to work. A life explained is a simple and certain thing, the ending is known and the plot to get there has already been unraveled. It made for a serene couple of hours at the Tropic Cinema. Then it was back out to Alberto.

Just a little rain, some discomfort, boredom perhaps in a town dedicated to the outdoors. There are museums and bars but rain seems to stop play in Key West. A time to reflect on the hurricane season to come, the desire for a crystal ball the hope that we shall look back and sigh gratefully that that went well.

I dropped off the Burgman for a new tire at the shop and my wife picked me up in the Fiat 500. Celia in sunny Arizona saw my Instagram post and remarked it was about time I was off the scooter and in a car. I suppose so but I always prefer two wheels to four.

But Rusty deal with adverse weather in the best way possible:

In the event of a hurricane he evacuates and I miss him.

Reasoning With Hurricanes

The last major hurricane to strike the Keys was Wilma in 2005 and it was pretty awful. It resembled the devastation of Katrina earlier that year (K comes before W) in New Orleans with drowned cars and evacuations of people and pets but without the violence. The storm left its mark on those of us who lived through it, just as Georges did a few years earlier in 1998, with flooding albeit on a much smaller scale. 

Hurricanes are idiosyncratic, inasmuch as they all develop and move in their own ways following some general meteorological rules and people responding to storms tend to develop their own rules, superstitions and attitudes. I think the best way to approach hurricanes is to work out a plan and then stick to it, which is hard to do if you don't have experience of dealing with these storms. I also advise against taking advice as in the end you will either evacuate for no reason which is expensive and annoying or you will sit out a storm that frightens the bejeesus out of you and in either case you only want to blame yourself not some innocent opinionated barfly who just happened to spout uninformed opinions in your hearing.

I have sat through a dozen  hurricanes over the past two decades of varying intensity from near misses to direct awful hits and because I work in the 911 center I obviously don't evacuate. I also get to observe them from the safety of the armored glass (they tell us) atop the police station. I will say that compared to other natural disasters hurricanes seem to cause a lot less loss of life than you might expect from all the hype. Property damage is usually caused by flooding or localised tornado winds embedded in the main body of the hurricane but with minimal common sense you should be able to survive a hurricane unscathed. Your home or vehicles may not be so lucky. As I recall one person died in Wilma and that was from a cardiac condition brought on by stress. I always recommend evacuation, early and with decisiveness. Load your car your pets and your spouse (and the children if you are fond of them) and bug out. Enjoy a vacation in a hotel a decent distance away and let the chips fall where they may. You will have plenty of warning and lots of time to get out if you have a mind to leave. My wife takes the dog and drives north to see friends when schools are closed as she is a teacher and she likes to get out before the highway gets jammed with traffic.

Judging how severe a storm might be is extremely difficult for the professionals in the National Hurricane Center in Miami so if you choose to stay assuming it will only be a Category One (explained further down this page) you be surprised when it gets upgraded to a Category Three and things get quite scary. Below we see a picture from NOAA of flooding caused by Wilma in 2005. North Roosevelt Boulevard is marked by the line of coconut palms:

The first warning you get comes in the form of a map with symbols to show a tropical wave that may start swirling and become a depression and then a storm and then a hurricane. The NHC offers a five day "cone" in the form of a white balloon to show roughly where they think it will go, but it's not an exact science. I show an example below taken from a few years ago on this page: National Hurricane Center If you click on the link you will see whatever is actually happening now. I also have this link in my list of sites to the left of this essay on my webpage.

One other thing that irritates the shit out of me is the assignation of gender to storms. Just because it's called Irene doesn't mean it is  a sentient being. A storm is a collection of wind and humidity and that's all. The hurricane people decided to start naming the storm for simplicity's sake and that got them into trouble. They choose names from A to Z (and double AA etc in the event there are lots, as there have been in a  few years). The names come from their families or friends and lately they have been trying to acknowledge the existence of other cultures in hurricane affected zones so you will see Spanish and French names crop up alongside Polynesian names as well. They alternate between male and female and if a storm produces death or damage the name is never used again. But a hurricane is an "it" not a he or a she. Excessive familiarity will taste pretty  dry if you watch your home get knocked down by your new girlfriend. Rant over.

Hurricanes are measured on this international scale: 

Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale

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Climatology | Names | Wind Scale | Extremes | Models | Breakpoints

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The Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale is a 1 to 5 rating based on a hurricane's sustained wind speed. This scale estimates potential property damage. Hurricanes reaching Category 3 and higher are considered major hurricanes because of their potential for significant loss of life and damage. Category 1 and 2 storms are still dangerous, however, and require preventative measures. In the western North Pacific, the term "super typhoon" is used for tropical cyclones with sustained winds exceeding 150 mph.

Category	Sustained Winds	Types of Damage Due to Hurricane Winds
1	74-95 mph 64-82 kt 119-153 km/h	Very dangerous winds will produce some damage: Well-constructed frame homes could have damage to roof, shingles, vinyl siding and gutters. Large branches of trees will snap and shallowly rooted trees may be toppled. Extensive damage to power lines and poles likely will result in power outages that could last a few to several days.
2	96-110 mph 83-95 kt 154-177 km/h	Extremely dangerous winds will cause extensive damage:Well-constructed frame homes could sustain major roof and siding damage. Many shallowly rooted trees will be snapped or uprooted and block numerous roads. Near-total power loss is expected with outages that could last from several days to weeks.
3 (major)	111-129 mph 96-112 kt 178-208 km/h	Devastating damage will occur: Well-built framed homes may incur major damage or removal of roof decking and gable ends. Many trees will be snapped or uprooted, blocking numerous roads. Electricity and water will be unavailable for several days to weeks after the storm passes.
4 (major)	130-156 mph 113-136 kt 209-251 km/h	Catastrophic damage will occur: Well-built framed homes can sustain severe damage with loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls. Most trees will be snapped or uprooted and power poles downed. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.
5 (major)	157 mph or higher 137 kt or higher 252 km/h or higher	Catastrophic damage will occur: A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.

Hurricanes' sustained winds do not reflect the force of tornado strength winds embedded in the swirling mass of vapor and this tornadoes can wreck your home and leave a neighbor almost unmolested. To prepare for the arrival of a hurricane you need to remove anything that could be uprooted and flung about like a missile in stronger winds than you have ever experienced in your life. 

So the question becomes what do you do? Well, you could choose to be hard core and throw a hurricane party and get drunk with friends as the winds build and act like you are the devil-may-care pirate of tourist myth. Or you could be like me, wondering if now is time to pull in the garden furniture and prepare for Disturbance 1  or whatever it's called, a system currently bringing rain and wind to the Northern Caribbean and Southern Bahamas. You may listen to the "never evacuate " crowd on their bar stools or you may prefer to stay and figure nowhere near as many will die as died in the recent Italian earthquake (nearly 200) nor will as many homes be destroyed as were burned in recent California wildfires and Louisiana floods (hundreds). 

We are now getting into the height of hurricane season when waters are hottest and winds are lightest giving swirling hurricanes the best chance to form and build. From now till the end of October is high season for hurricanes. I will say this: it's easy to be brave until you get up close to these things. As winds rise and seas start crashing you will realize you are losing all control over your life. When highway one is closed to inbound traffic evacuation picks up speed. When a mandatory evacuation is ordered the authorities are telling you that if you need help you won't get any. You are free to stay home but when winds reach 35 mph sustained police fire and rescue won't be dispatched to help you. Take that as your warning. Then they will announce Highway One bridges are too windy for safe travel and you are stuck. Planes have long since stopped flying, last minute evacuees have left it too late. Then you sit and wait and hope you have cut down all coconuts to prevent them becoming cannonballs. You have put up your hurricane shutters. You have food and water and pet food. 

You look around and hope all is secure. You got to stay with friends and you pass empty streets and houses barricaded as though abandoned.

A last dash for gas, and then the hunkering begins. Hunker down they say, and you do and then you learn what the sound of 135 mph winds do to your eardrums and rain pushed at windows like bullets. 

The weather reports as you hunker look like this, taken from a hurricane report a FEW YEARS AGO as an example:

DISCUSSION AND 48-HOUR OUTLOOK
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AT 500 AM EDT...0900 UTC...THE CENTER OF TROPICAL STORM ISAAC WAS
LOCATED NEAR LATITUDE 19.0 NORTH...LONGITUDE 73.3 WEST. ISAAC IS
MOVING TOWARD THE NORTHWEST NEAR 14 MPH...22 KM/H...AND A
WEST-NORTHWEST TO NORTHWEST MOTION IS EXPECTED TO CONTINUE FOR THE
NEXT COUPLE OF DAYS WITH SOME INCREASE IN FORWARD SPEED. ON THE
FORECAST TRACK...THE CENTER OF ISAAC WILL MOVE NEAR OR OVER EASTERN
CUBA TODAY...AND MOVE NEAR THE NORTH COAST OF CUBA TONIGHT AND
APPROACH THE FLORIDA KEYS ON SUNDAY.

And as I write we have a possible hurricane forming in the northern Caribbean quite likely bringing heavy rain this weekend and possibly even a hurricane though the odds at this point seem to indicate just a period of wind and rain for a couple of days. 

Let us presume that Disturbance 1 does take the 50% chance and decides to develop into a Category One hurricane. What to do? I dare say one will assume it will not develop into a major barn storming hurricane, say a Category Three and one stays put. This will be interesting. Most people in the Keys have never lived through a hurricane. Lots to think about suddenly.

Reasoning With Hurricane Season

Well, here we are again proposing to reason with hurricane season. No chance! It's June and from now till the end of November there's a chance of a storm. These days happily the National Hurricane Center in Miami spends less time trying to predict the number and size of storms and more time trying to alert people to the possibilities.

I have lived through a lot of hurricanes but owing to the fact the last major hit, a really bad one, was in distant 2005 many residents have never seen a hurricane. Last year I dropped by the hurricane hunter planes that came to visit in Marathon. They fly into the storms and make major contributions to the modern science of hurricane predictions.

However being able to observe the presence of storms doesn't necessarily mean scientists can predict their path. Or their strength. Hurricanes are odd things as they are pushed by air flows and create devastating tornadoes inside their swirling winds. One house can get trashed and a neighbor can be left untouched. All the scientists can recommend is to "have a plan." Good luck.

Another weird feature of hurricanes is that they are part of world wide weather phenomena. They affect large swathes of the planet's surface yet they too are affected by weather formations elsewhere. El Niño in the Pacific Ocean sucks strength out of the Atlantic Hurricane season. Go figure.

The Hebert (pro: hay-BEAR) Box is located between 15 and 20 degrees North and 60 to 65 degrees West and is a marker after a fashion for South Florida hurricane strikes. If a storm passes through the box shown below that contains Anguilla and Dominique there is an added probability statistically speaking, of a major strike in South Florida.

Given all this uncertainty hurricane season creates space for a lot of bullshit. Old timers, real or fakers hunch over bottles of beer and tell wide eyed newcomers what to do or not to do which can leave some people high and dry when the winds pick up and you get that scary whistling sound of winds blowing out of control, lashing rain, leaves flying, the power going out, isolation and fear and always at night when everything is worse. And then it's too late to evacuate.

The Keys are a good place to be in hurricane season. Everyone lives close to nature, it's hard to ignore the fact that you are vulnerable in these small islands. During Wilma in 2005 I saw a lot of heroic behavior and no rioting or looting or anything remotely like that. I'd rather be here than elsewhere in a natural disaster.

My own hurricane plan is pretty simple. I stay at the police station while my wife normally evacuates with the dog when schools are closed. Variations include staying with friends for a minor storm or having a friend over in our place. But on the whole I plan to enjoy summer and Fall and let hurricanes look after themselves for the time being.

 

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Tropical Storm Erika

It is the news of the weekend, inside Florida and among Florida watchers, the tropical storm that drowned a couple of dozen unfortunates in Dominica (pro: Dom-in-éek-ah)...Don't know where Dominica is? Don't worry, it's an insignificant speck of land in the West Indies where building codes are...locally adapted and where people are poor with a history formed by Europeans; French and British mostly after Spanirds discovered it on a Sunday and he gave it a Latin name, as you do, of course. More importantly this whirling cloud of heavy rain is aimed more or less at Florida, home to beaches, Mickey Mouse, strange people and loved by all as vacationland USA. I exaggerate but not by much. Don't worry, the story ends well, no one dies, the dog sleeps through the storm and next week the sun will be back out.

If you hunt around the web you will find these dramatic images. The less dramatic ones in the second half of this essay first appeared on this very blog, so it should be apparent one can survive a tropical storm with a little luck. I'm not sure if alligators or hurricanes strike the most fear in people who view Florida, bizarrely, as a dangerous place to live. Distracted driving, guns, lightning strikes and falling coconuts could be considered dangers; mosquitoes and sand fleas are irritants and humidity can be off-putting. The weather, however is mostly perfect ALL THE TIME. Hurricanes are an occasional irritation but unlike California earthquakes, fires and mudslides, or Oklahoma tornadoes hardly anyone dies in a hurricane in the first world. As we mark the New Orleans catastrophe we forget, conveniently, that broken levees created the disaster. Katrina was long gone by the time the 9th Ward started killing people. Paying taxes, maintaining public works and pulling together as a single, multi racial nation maintains our civilization. Falling to keep up with the infrastructure kills people. Hurricanes are merely dramatic incidentals. If you stay sober and sensible you will be fine.

Historically speaking hurricanes came out of nowhere, knocked down tar paper homes and swept bodies out to sea: all before morning. That was before government scientists started studying and tracking storms, before taxpayers put satellites into space. Remember every single loud noisy colorful, overly dramatic weather forecaster gets their basic data from the National Hurricane Center in Miami. All the weather.com, weather underground and crown weather services simply interpret the government provided data. You can look at the government page and figure it out for yourself, it really isn't hard. Hurricanes used to be terrible:

As I write this on Friday afternoon it seems to me there is a 50-50 chance Tropical Storm Erika will be a damp squib. Sure, the system may bring rain and maybe even wind, but the path is not conducive to storm development and in those areas where warm waters might feed a cyclone the winds are apparently going to be trying to prevent the storm from reforming, so all in all it looks more like a wet winter weekend ahead rather than a dramatic swath of destruction. I take my cue from the low key NHC predictions at the moment. On the other hand a storm is a thing of Nature and no one really knows what's going to happen so taking a few simple precautions make sense. For me whose job takes over my life when storms approach, for me there is no opportunity for last minute preparations. I may go into work tonight and not come home till the storm has passed. I do get to spend the weather in the safest building in Key West, but I do my job best when I leave home knowing everything is as prepared as it can be. So I cleaned up and even though my wife won't be evacuating I know she will be secure in an organized home, with a support network while I am at work. Evacuation seems silly when the storm is expected to rake the entire state with rain and some wind.

I usually encourage the brash to evacuate. Once a mandatory evacuation is announced it doesn't mean you will be forced to leave, it just means that when the storm arrives emergency services will be shut down and you will be alone. For all the talk of self reliance you would be amazed how scared people get when the house starts to shake incessantly, when the winds are so loud conversation is inaudible, when the internet breaks, the lights and air conditioning go out, when the canal starts to crawl out its bed like a bad science fiction movie...and there is no help to be had. It goes on and on and I suppose it's why people get drunk.

After the storm if things went well life gets easy in a hurry, the weather turns perfect, and life goes back to normal. If not, not. I find the idea of an ice storm to be horrifying and I take solace from the fact that after a storm you might be sweating but you won't freeze to death. Flooding can be horrid but a mudslide such as I have seen in California is infinitely worse. Love Creek in the San Lorenzo Valkey slide in the winter of 1982 drowned 13 people in the mud. Imagine that death, and I think most of those bodies are still lost in the mud. So how bad are hurricanes? Not as bad as earthquakes that routinely kill people and buildings without warning and without mercy.

I like keeping supplies on hand, some cans and packets of food that I like to eat. Mormons require their followers to keep a year's worth of supplies on hand against the unexpected arrival of the Apocalypse, an event that will apparently distract God for long enough that Mormons are expected to be able to survive for a year without help. Ignoring the rather peculiar dogma the result is that you can buy assorted foods that have a shelf life of twenty five years. I like LINK. Preparing ahead of time means hurricanes don't leave you running around like headless chickens when they appear. Put away the garden furniture, which you bought light weight and stackable to make that easy, fill the gas tank, buy water and get some cash from the ATM. Order pizza and wait.

In 1953 the U.S. started giving women's names to storms. 25 years later they mixed in men's names and a few years ago they added -gasp!- foreign names to reflect the various cultures that are affected in the Caribbean as well as in Polynesia and the Far East. Naming storms is helpful in the modern endless news cycles we live in, for those that still watch television. However don't imagine that storms have genders: a storm is an it. Like the ocean, storms don't care about you, they don't care if your life is damaged, storms, brace for it, don't have feelings. I find it odd that humans like to invest storms with personalities but they do. To think of TS Erika as a "she" seems weird to me. But there again I think my dog has feelings and you'd be astonished how many people ignore their yard dogs during hurricanes. Personally I hope bad things happen to them but there again I don't have much truck with karma either...

And like every human experience there's nothing new under the sun. The track shown below looks like TS Erika as "she" approaches Florida. Actually it's Chantal as "she" failed to approach Florida in 2013.

By all means pray for us and remind us to stay safe which I find is a complicated instruction to obey. If you think prayer helps I would suggest praying for Syrian mothers who can't find food for their kids or (black) residents of New Orleans who are still washed out a decade after the event. Keep a couple of extra prayers in reserve if you must in case Erika pulls a fast one and blossoms into a Category Two with embedded tornadoes and strikes just as the incautious are passing out from alcoholic hurricane parties. They say God takes care of fools and drunks but I imagine the Almighty has a few more pressing problems than a first world tropical storm strike. Wish it weren't so but I fear the world outside the Caribbean hasn't stopped being properly chaotic even as we suffer some heavy rain.

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