Nothing, in my opinion, is more regal, more poignantly glorious than the onset of Autumn. As late summer fades, shadows lengthen, cobwebs cover the boxwoods and drape the herbaceous borders of our property. The dogwood berries bronze in the westering sunlight and school buses and fussy knots of school children fill the leafy avenues of my quiet neighborhood.
As I begin planning my Autumnal house decorations, the evenings get longer and cooler, mosquitoes die, the grass starts browning and it will soon be time to rake the leaves. Football begins in earnest, chili simmers on our stove. I find it delightful. As Keats so elegantly put it, Autumn is a "season of mists and mellow fruitfulness", at least until a hurricane, like a belligerent drunk at a garden party, ruins the mood.
The giant tropical storms crash through the state regularly at this time of year; rogue meteorological elephants stomping around the beaches and piedmont, sometimes even reaching the mountain ranges, delivering high winds and whole feet of rain. Hurricanes also tend to drag with them the steamy alligator swamp weather of their southern Atlantic origins. Mid-September ought to be dry, mildly summery, lovely for strolling in the long descent into twilight. It ought not to be 89° Fahrenheit with ten inches of rain flooding the storm drain systems and with the threat of falling trees killing electrical transformers and dropping power lines. And yet, that’s exactly what hurricanes do. I cannot think of anything more antithetical to the Fall mood.
Last year, my good friend's daughter was set to be married in mid-October. A few days before the weekend of the blessed event, forecast models began predicting a storm headed directly for our part of the state. When the hurricane landed it brought high winds, swirling tornadoes and arresting amounts of rain. Trees were down all over my friend's woodsy neighborhood. They had to dress and primp without electricity, drive around trying to find a way out of their community that wasn't blocked by trees or service trucks in order to survey the damage at the outdoor wedding site. Luckily it wasn’t that bad.
Everyone who showed up early enough to the scene rolled up their sleeves and lent a hand cleaning up. My friend was so stressed out that he couldn't calm down until the organ started playing. It was a long time after that, that he finally lost the look of someone who had been continuously goosed by a live wire for six months straight. After the happy couple departed for their honeymoon, if anyone even whispered the word ‘hurricane’ within earshot, my friend fell into a kind of hysterical catatonic state and gibbered something about clergy fees and power outages. At several points since, I’ve seen him gaze at the sky with haunted eyes and whisper, “Hurricaaaaannneee’s a’comin’!” in one, long, guttural growl.
Our Louisiana family regularly has to deal with hurricanes. As close to sea level as they are, flooding is a foregone conclusion, as are electrical failures, downed trees and destroyed bridges and roadways. One year as we drove north to help my father who was undergoing serious heart surgery, we spent much of our trip getting updates about how badly the Bayou State had been hit. Within a few days of our arrival in Pennsylvania, the same storm threaded its way across the eastern part of the state, forcing me to deal with my father's rapidly flooding cellar, where the excess rain caused his basement wall to actually spray water like a peeing statue in a wealthy widow's garden.
The year before that, we had two tropical storms pass over within two weeks of one another, downing a maple tree in our front yard and leaving much of central North Carolina with significant interruptions in electrical service. Departing early from work due to downed lines, it took myself and a deputy friend about 45 minutes to release an older patron who had been trapped in our elevator. While we worked, the storm dumped a staggering four inches of rain. It would go on to dump eight more inches before it passed on up the coast.
I dread hurricane season. And it's only going to get worse.
As ocean temperatures rise due to all the carbon we are expelling from our vehicles and production plants, the intensity and destructive potential of the storms—and weather generally—will increase. This year, for the first time in over 100 years, a tropical storm hit Los Angeles County, flooding and destroying parts of the city.
Anomalous storms like Hurricane Katrina, which leveled whole states and forced families to move to other places for years until their towns and cities and homes could be renovated, used to be a once-a-century occurrence. The National Oceanographic and Aeronautic Association (NOAA) is predicting that within the next twenty or thirty years, Katrina-sized hurricanes will be the more commonplace kind. Super storms, exponentially bigger than Katrina, will take the place of hundred-year storms. Imagine category 3 storms like Katrina, but devastating the entire eastern seaboard, from Florida to Maine, or from the Gulf of Mexico to the prairie states and beyond, one after another for the duration of the hurricane season. And that's not even the Big One. The Century Storm will be the weather equivalent of a nuclear attack. A category 5 storm will produce stupifying 157 mile per hour winds and, to quote NOAA again, “catastrophic damage will occur: A high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse. Fallen trees and service 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 don't just bring huge storms, they also mess with regular air patterns, causing tornadoes, straight-wind shears called derechos, where usually convex wind patterns are driven in a flat line like a herd of buffalo charging across the plains. Huge downpours are also common. I have driven through a derecho (while crossing the Mississippi into Minnesota) and few things I have experienced in a car were more terrifying, including traffic in the Holland Tunnel and other drivers in downtown Reading. Perhaps most deadly, though, is storm surge. Of all hurricanes in the Atlantic, from 1963 to 2012 (again, via NOAA) 49% of deaths were caused by rising tides and surges of water and fully 88% of all hurricane deaths were water related.
Clean up can cost billions in insurance fees and infrastructure repair. Towns and cities in the direct path of a category five hurricane will be rendered wastelands for years after and if Katrina is anything to go by, the government funded organizations like FEMA and the Army Corps of Engineers will fail communities both before and after the storm hits.
Human stupidity, as usual, also plays a part in hurricane damage and loss of life. A few years ago, on the last full night of a vacation weekend, Micki and I found out that we had to evacuate due to an incoming storm. As we were leaving super early the next morning, hightailing it to higher ground, people moseyed on the beach and took pictures of the worsening rip currents as if everything was fine. I wish that this wasn’t the case, but perhaps because this is America, there are always some schmucks with tapioca where their brains should be who decide to wait things out, hoping plywood and sand bags will protect the family home from a storm that resembles a massive food processor made of wind and water and debris from destroyed homes and businesses.
As I write this, I've never been more ready for chilly weather; for the deliciously long slide into winter. Summer has been warm after a milder start and the last few weeks delivered highs of near 100° with soggy humidity for days and days. With school starting back and Labor Day looming, it will soon be that greatest of all seasons and I’m looking forward to it.
Fall in the North Carolina piedmont is epic and often, the bluest skies you've ever seen are on bright, glorious display every day throughout the season. And yet, here comes the first tropical nightmare of the year. In time for the first long weekend of the season, spaghetti models are showing that at least one proposed path of Hurricane Idalia is headed right over my house. Rather than cooler temps, and gently rainy days, I'm going to have a flooded basement and a stress headache, hoping my big oak doesn't choose this year to ruin the street and everything else. I could possibly be okay if we aren't washed away. Even if Idalia degrades before it makes landfall, the wind and water will be intense and possibly damaging. We will lose power for a few days. We always do.
If this is to be the first of several hurricanes (and we're due for a year of multiple storms) I'd just like to go on record and ask for us to be spared, just for this season.
This year, I just don't want any hurricanes. Not one. Keep them. El Niño was supposed to push them all out to sea, but it seems The Boy has dropped the ball. This year, I just can't deal. Please, if there are any weather gods listening, turn this and all further tropical weather back into the Atlantic. Spare Louisiana, Florida and Mexico and the Caribbean and the entire Eastern Seaboard. Spare the whole darn country. Especially, spare my hurricane addled friend who, even now, is beginning to chitter and shake with dreaded expectation.
We really need a break. This year, we really hurrican’t.
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