I’m not sure if any of you remember Hurricane Milton that hit Florida a few weeks ago, but since I was (somewhat) directly affected, I thought I should post about it. Even if I’m very late.
I would have gotten around to it sooner, but I was busy lost all motivation.
To be fair, there was that whole storm thing and the kids were off school for six days (including weekends and holidays), and I got sick with a seemingly non-Covid virus that made me want to sleep for a few hours every day. morning after the kids finally went back to school. (I usually sleep a few hours every morning… in fact, I should probably say “sleep a few hours” because I still do.)
Anyway, I’m begrudgingly trying to get back to doing things other than laundry, making dinner, and sleeping, so here we are.
My home is about ten miles north of downtown Orlando and the late change in Hurricane Milton’s forecast track brought the center of the storm so far south across the state that we missed the worst of the winds. Milton, once a fearsome Category 5 hurricane, also quickly disintegrated just before landfall, which was a relief and also very relatable to me personally. Falling to pieces at the first sign of people is kind of my whole brand.
I’ve lived in Florida all my life, so the hurricane experience and routine is extremely familiar. And as global warming continues to worsen these natural disasters, the gallows humor that many Floridians use to deal with the uncertainty of it all continues to thrive. I don’t mean to be flippant or insensitive. I understand that every time a hurricane hits, lives are lost and destroyed, and that is truly heartbreaking, but I tend to do things the right way. I joke about being doomed because there’s a good chance that at some point I will actually be doomed. It will be my turn to suffer. As Hurricane Helene showed us, everyone is at risk, even if you live in a geographically safe place.
The days leading up to a hurricane’s arrival are in many ways worse than the storm itself. There is a slow and inexorable build-up. To say it’s like seeing a waveform in the ocean is probably a bit of an exaggeration, but yes, it looks a lot like it.
About three or four days later, I start obsessively looking at the hurricane models online and texting my friends that we’re all going to die. My brother is something of a pseudo-meteorologist at this point, so I rely on him for technical analysis of track forecasts and storm intensity predictions. We joke that whatever model run comes next (the major weather models release information every 6 or 12 hours) will be the key to determining our fate. We fluctuate between “we are doomed” and “we are safe” at least four times a day.
Two days out I usually go to the supermarket to buy whatever water is left on the shelf and some chocolate muffins. This time I scored two small bottles of Water of Life, which seemed appropriate since our lives were once again on the line. The price on the shelf had been partially rubbed off, so for some reason I guessed they were $0.49 each. Turns out they were $2.49 each, but if those 7 ounces of water somehow helped save my family’s life, it was still a bargain. There was a wide variety of muffins, which was a relief because I’d rather throw myself in front of a Cat 5 hurricane than tell my daughter we’re out of muffins.
On a day out, I usually spend a lot of time doing two things: wondering how the storm hasn’t arrived yet, because it seems like I’ve been waiting my whole life, and moving patio furniture on our small porch. I think carefully about things like should I move the furniture to the garage? Do you tilt it on the ground to lower the center of gravity and reduce the chance of it being blown away by the wind? That makes sense, right? From a physics perspective? Cluster it together to provide some sort of security in the numbers? Ultimately, I decide to leave everything in place because nothing matters.
I look around the garden and imagine the wind somehow grabbing the garden hose that’s always lying there in the ground. It would sway back and forth. Hitting the ground and the house and maybe the AC unit like a crazy snake. I leave the hose where it is. I’d actually like to see that.
My wife had to work at the hospital during the storm, so she was away overnight. As hurricanes always seem to do, Milton made landfall in the dark, so we got the worst of the weather in the early morning hours when we couldn’t see what was happening outside. This increases the intrigue. The kids and I hung out all night, eschewing bedtime routines and eating hurricane snacks late into the night. The kids planned to squeeze in as much electronics time as possible before the power went out (that never happened) and I planned not to lie on their bedroom floor for hours while they tried to go to sleep.
Before we turned into house cats and slept on couches and floors and the random bed, my daughter and I managed to make this paper chain.
I’m pretty excited about how it turned out. She insisted that we hang it on the wall and I agreed that it was the right idea. Unfortunately, because we used that blue tape that you’re supposed to use on walls when you’re painting, the chain was structurally flawed. It lost its integrity within hours.
The plan now is to let it hang like that for at least the next 6 to 9 months. It really ties the room together.
Hurricanes tend to be loud and at least a little scary, and Milton was no exception. However, our last hurricane experience (Irma, I believe) was definitely louder. We had a few gusts of wind this time, including a few big ones and a few bumps on the roof from falling limbs, but overall the night was okay. As far as I know, everyone slept at least a few hours and woke up the next day, ready to continue with our mundane lives. Like I said, the power was still on, so my kids were in heaven.
Here is the extremely minor damage. Luckily (or unfortunately for me?) the trampoline barely survived.
After the long days off from school and the few hours spent cleaning up the yard (the kids were all wielding saws and other sharp objects and no one lost fingers… win!), we’re basically back to normal. The neighborhood children do still and asked me to bounce them on the trampoline as if we weren’t just surviving a hurricane. Children can be tiring.
Anyway, that’s my not-so-harrowing hurricane story. I’m sure we’ll be back next year (if not sooner) for another round.
Father, writer and editor. Author of the novel Love’s a Disaster and the humorous essay collection Fatherhood: Dispatches From the Early Years. I’m probably sweeping the trampoline right now.
