Well, as you all know its Hurricane Season again here on the Gulf Coast. We’ve already got one in the Gulf, and its been said that this year may be much more active than seasons past.
And every year, on the local news, they run footage of homeowners and shopkeeps franticly boarding up windows and lashing down trees. Inevetably(sp) when they do this, they interview a few folks. And while most impart they are planning to get the hell out of Dodge, there are always a few who say they plan to ride it out.
I, personally , have always wanted to stay through just one hurricane. But I was either whisked off to safety at Grammas house in New Braunfels, or as now, have kids of my own that must be whisked.
So I wanted to know: Have any of you Dopers ‘rode one out’ ? What was it like? And would you do it again?
Thanks for letting me live vicariously through your experiences.
3BM
The worst part of the storms for me has been the jellyfish.
There’s so many washed up on the beaches, and I didn’t realize until I got home that I must have been lying in nettles. I’m covered with calomine lotion right now and that’s over lanocane.
I rode out Hurricane Fran back 5-6 years ago. It was doubly scary because it struck in the middle of the night. First, all the power went out. The the howling of the wind. Every couple of minutes I heard a tree come crashing down or a roof get blown off. I would look out the window and see the blue glows periodically in the distance as transformers blew. Every time a branch or piece of debris hit the house, my stomach would sink (“oh shit, this is where I lose my roof”).
As bad as the storm was, the aftermath was so much worse. Stifling heat, no electricity, no running water, no stores open, roads blocked, can’t go anywhere, can’t do anything for a week. Not fun at all.
I sat through Carla in 1960 and Alicia in 1983. Pretty hairy stuff - trees fying through the air and all. I didn’t actually see any airborne houses, but there were a few. As Alicia was hitting, I dropped a friend off at his motel and drove home. While I knew the guts of the storm were not upon us yet, it was still an exciting drive through torrential rain with the wind strong enough to make the car a bit hard to handle. The 30 yards or so from the car to my door were a bit more difficult to handle. Once inside it was mainly a matter of sitting through it.
Three memories from Alicia: 1) an uprooted tree “walking” down my street, 2) I lived in a 2nd story loft apartment and I saw a cat appear suddenly on a window screen and just as suddenly disappear and 3) a moment of ice in my veins when the whole house rocked a couple of times. I met up with my friend a few days later and learned that two walls and the ceiling of his motel room just disappeared suddenly, so he and his girlfriend ran for a freeway overpass - they made it, although they were pursued by a billboard part of the way. I went by there looking for them after the storm and couldn’t find the motel. Some friends who lived on NASA 1 found a large boat in their swimming pool.
I do remember going outside as the eye passed over during both storms and it seemed truly strange to experience such calm knowing what raging weather surrounded us. Another thing that struck me was that both times the trailing part of the storm (Act II - post-eye) didn’t seem quite as ferocious as the leading part. Maybe that’s just a perceptual thing; after having the still fresh experience of the leading portion, perhaps I was just not as in awe.
xizor’s right about the worst part for most people; a week without power or water, no groceries and unable to go to work for a few days was the real pain.
The overwhelming majority of people in town came through it just fine, albeit with property losses. But, on driving around and surveying the damage afterwards, it occurred to me that it really was a roll of the dice as to whether you got a tree through the roof or not. I’d say leave if you can.
I left before Hugo (back in '89, but people described it just like the prior posts. I want to add that I got back too early. No electricity for 2 weeks. It’s definitely the aftermath that’s the worst part of it, if your house comes through fairly unscathed. I was in a hurry to get back because I was anxious to see how my abode turned out. So if you leave, you don’t know how your house is and that gives you some anxiety; whereas, if you stay, you eliminate that. I think the worst thing to do is leave, and the hurricane actually hits and the hurricane is fairly strong, and you come back right away, with the infrastructure gone. Living without the infrastructure is no fun.
I was able to sleep through Fran and Floyd. As long as you’re not in a flood-prone area, the aftermath isn’t so bad as long as you have at least one generator. The aftermath of Fran was so bad as far as the heat was concerned that my dad bought a second generator to pull a window air conditioner. Needless to say, Floyd was no problem for us…except that flooding cut off all the roads out of our town. We were lucky though…the flooding was terrible in most places after Floyd.
AM/PM - Yeesh, sorry to hear about the jellyfish. That’s gotta be the pits. xizor - I totally agree with you, barbitu and Beatle, the aftermath is terrible. When Alicia came through here, my brother and I came home before the power was back on and it was stifling. We had to cook all the meat from the deep freeze, and there wasn’t a damn thing to do. Mom wouldn’t let us go play because she was afraid snakes and the relocating fire ants would get us. beatle - Wow, you stayed through Carla? Thats one that gets referred to as a ‘big one’. You get extra credit for that one .
Just out of curiosity, how close to the coast were you all? We are less than 10 minutes from the beach. I guess it would be more dangerous to stay this close.
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