Connecting the Dots a Few Hours at a Time
I’ve been removed from the Gulf Coast for 30 years now. Despite this, anytime there’s a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico, I take an interest. I grow concerned. I watch The Weather Channel often. I can’t help it; I care.
Growing up down there, sometime around mid-May, our local TV station would start advertising these free hurricane tracking maps. Tropical advisories are issued every six hours. But once there are watches and warnings, those updates will increase to every three hours. With each update, I would put a dot on the map approximately where the advisory has a storm. Over time, you’d see the storm path develop. I’ll never forget the random path of Hurricane Elena in 1986, as it seemed to forget it meant to pick up some cigars in Tampa before crashing on the Gulf Coast (see below).
All of this was to keep you fully aware of these tropical storms. To me, it’s the same as scoring a baseball game or writing in a journal. The cognitive effect of placing dots on a map lets you know exactly what was going on and how worried you should be about it. I used to drive my mom nuts with the constant storm updates. I always took comfort in knowing we had days to plan for an arriving hurricane, compared to tornadoes where you only have minutes. My mom was very much the opposite.
There was a time when I dreamed about working for the National Hurricane Center in Coral Gables, Florida. Then I found out I would need at least eight years of college to even consider it, and that just seemed overwhelming. But, I still watch hurricane updates on the Weather Channel in the same way I watch SportsCenter on ESPN. I’m paying close attention as Hurricane Helene intensifies rapidly as it heads for the Big Bend area of Florida, affecting pretty much everything except for the extreme western panhandle where I lived. This will be the third named storm to hit the area in the past couple of years, and it may do so as a Category 4. I’ll watch as it makes landfall, then heads north into Georgia, packing a large punch throughout the state, reminiscent of Hurricane Opal in 1995. I hope for the best for everywhere that’s affected.
After this passes, I’ll watch the next storm. Hopefully, it will be nothing. I hope they’re all nothing. But, you can only get lucky so much, so you keep a watchful eye while connecting the dots.
