The Wind and the Rain
I just checked the date on my hurricane-prep post from last year, which was when Irene looked likely to hit us.
August 23rd.
Meanwhile, the papers have overflowed all week with the 20-year retrospective of Hurricane Andrew. Yes, 20 years ago, the first named storm of the season, storm A, didn't form until late August. (And landed as a Category 5.) When you dig back into the archives, 20, 30, 50 years, you do find that at one point is was common for the first named storm to wait until late July or August. Now, it's June or even May.
I became a Watcher of Hurricanes when my partner Missy entered my life -- around here, we swot up hurricane stats the way sports fans go for baseball numbers. At this point in my life, the only time I've actually gone through hurricane conditions in person was in the late 70s, on a trip to Indiana, when our little caravan of high schoolers from New Mexico had our KOA encampment hit by the outer fringe of what was probably Hurricane Bob (at that precise time, only Tropical Depression Bob). Heavy rains and a lot of rubbernecking the next day, as we drove through the flooded world. I still remember one house, its front yard a sheet of water, with a little girl in a bright swimming suit happily splashing and playing with a bright beach ball.
Meanwhile, back in the present day: the projected track of Hurricane Isaac (currently Tropical Storm Isaac) has been waggling back and forth for the last several days, illustrating just how tough a game prediction is. Those waggles range from the storm missing us by a comfortable margin, and missing us by a very small margin. None of the tracks have it hitting Tampa while the RNC is going on, but I suppose that really would be too much to ask.
Sensible folks around here don't assume that any given storm will be generous enough to miss, so Missy and I agreed last week that the hurricane shutters would go up today. Last year, my first year of this, was a misery for me. The kind of shutters we have are actually called 'storm panels', and putting them up is a fairly strenuous activity: the kind of shutters that unfold themselves with the push of a button or an easy turn of a crank are extremely expensive.
Imagine a sheet of corrugated cardboard, and picture the wavy bit of paper in the center. Now picture that wavy bit done up large, in solid steel, in long rectangular panels that are about two and a half feet wide and four or five feet long. The 'wave' of the corrugation is a couple of inches deep when you look at it end-on. Now imagine a stack of these. They're stiff, not flexible, and they're heavy: they're meant to keep the window glass from blowing out when the winds hit 120 mph or more. They're meant to hold up when objects are flung by that wind.
You set the panels over the windows, one at a time: there's a track at the top of the window, just wide enough to fit the panel, and a row of bolts at the bottom, with the business end of the screw poking out. Hold up a single panel, line it up carefully, jam the top into the track (they fit VERY tightly and have to be pushed HARD), push the holes at the bottom onto the screw ends. Remove the heavy gloves you're wearing to protect your hands from the edges of the steel panel, apply a wingbolt to the screw end to hold the panel in place. Then put the gloves back on, pick up the next panel, and repeat. The vertical corrugation means that you fit the first corrugation of each panel over the last in the previous panel, so that they overlap in a way that locks the covering. It's really a very clever, simple solution, getting the most out of the materials: http://www.hurricaneshuttersflorida.com/storm_shutters_miami.html
I did mention, though, that they're heavy. And they fit tightly. And a typical small window requires three or four panels, and a large window needs a dozen or so. Last year, when we put them up, it was blazing sunshine, high humidity, and temperatures in the 90s. I could just about manage ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch before I had to take a break in the air conditioning, gasping and trying not to keel over.
But this year. Ah, this year.
I woke up to the sound of Missy making espresso, and rain on the roof. We started getting the storm's 'feeder bands' yesterday afternoon -- some wind, and lots and lots of heavy rain. Missy headed out to the grocery store, and I looked at the thermometer, whooped with delight, and threw on clothing. The temperature had plummeted -- to the mid 70s. (This is a very surreal thing for me to say.)
You see, Missy (being a Cat Person) hates to get wet -- that is, she hates getting rained on. It really doesn't bother me (a good thing for living in Seattle, or in south Florida for that matter), although I don't like being wet and cold. What I do hate, and suffer from, is not being able to be physically active outdoors because it's too damned hot. You see the lovely win-win situation that presented itself?
I spent a cheerful hour or so outdoors in the rain, hoisting hurricane shutters and feeling butch and virtuous (and not feeling miserably hot). By the time Missy got back from the store and saw what I'd been up to, I was more than two-thirds finished. It's amazing how much faster the work was when I didn't have to stop and recover from heat exhaustion every ten minutes!! I was soaked to the skin, and got rather a lot of water on Missy when she hugged me. Then she went inside and baked me a cake, and I finished getting the shutters up, with a very wide smug grin plastered all over my face.
I have a bit of an ache in my back now -- it's far and away the most strenuous activity I've had since the hike on the Appalachian Trail back in May (also in the rain). I still have a smug look on my face.
The house is rather cavelike with the shutters up, although we've left them off a few of the windows for now. We use more lights indoors, but it's easier for the AC to cool the house once they're up, since there's a pocket of dead air over each window and a layer of steel reflecting away the sunlight. (I think we about break even on power usage.) Once up, the shutters stay up until hurricane season ends -- after Thanksgiving. It's usually a lot cooler by the time we're taking them down.
As I mentioned last year, if a storm actually hits us, I may be offline for one or more days. The electricity here goes out even when there aren't any hurricanes going on, so nobody expects it to stay up when a storm hits. The first service to come back is usually cell phones. If we get hit, as soon as the storm has passed, I will get word out by cell phone to my sister, who has access to this journal and can let everyone know that we're okay.
Meanwhile, the projected track of Isaac has now wobbled away from us again. I'm really glad I don't live in the Florida panhandle or on the Gulf Coast. Those who do, you will be in my thoughts, and I hope you stay safe.
August 23rd.
Meanwhile, the papers have overflowed all week with the 20-year retrospective of Hurricane Andrew. Yes, 20 years ago, the first named storm of the season, storm A, didn't form until late August. (And landed as a Category 5.) When you dig back into the archives, 20, 30, 50 years, you do find that at one point is was common for the first named storm to wait until late July or August. Now, it's June or even May.
I became a Watcher of Hurricanes when my partner Missy entered my life -- around here, we swot up hurricane stats the way sports fans go for baseball numbers. At this point in my life, the only time I've actually gone through hurricane conditions in person was in the late 70s, on a trip to Indiana, when our little caravan of high schoolers from New Mexico had our KOA encampment hit by the outer fringe of what was probably Hurricane Bob (at that precise time, only Tropical Depression Bob). Heavy rains and a lot of rubbernecking the next day, as we drove through the flooded world. I still remember one house, its front yard a sheet of water, with a little girl in a bright swimming suit happily splashing and playing with a bright beach ball.
Meanwhile, back in the present day: the projected track of Hurricane Isaac (currently Tropical Storm Isaac) has been waggling back and forth for the last several days, illustrating just how tough a game prediction is. Those waggles range from the storm missing us by a comfortable margin, and missing us by a very small margin. None of the tracks have it hitting Tampa while the RNC is going on, but I suppose that really would be too much to ask.
Sensible folks around here don't assume that any given storm will be generous enough to miss, so Missy and I agreed last week that the hurricane shutters would go up today. Last year, my first year of this, was a misery for me. The kind of shutters we have are actually called 'storm panels', and putting them up is a fairly strenuous activity: the kind of shutters that unfold themselves with the push of a button or an easy turn of a crank are extremely expensive.
Imagine a sheet of corrugated cardboard, and picture the wavy bit of paper in the center. Now picture that wavy bit done up large, in solid steel, in long rectangular panels that are about two and a half feet wide and four or five feet long. The 'wave' of the corrugation is a couple of inches deep when you look at it end-on. Now imagine a stack of these. They're stiff, not flexible, and they're heavy: they're meant to keep the window glass from blowing out when the winds hit 120 mph or more. They're meant to hold up when objects are flung by that wind.
You set the panels over the windows, one at a time: there's a track at the top of the window, just wide enough to fit the panel, and a row of bolts at the bottom, with the business end of the screw poking out. Hold up a single panel, line it up carefully, jam the top into the track (they fit VERY tightly and have to be pushed HARD), push the holes at the bottom onto the screw ends. Remove the heavy gloves you're wearing to protect your hands from the edges of the steel panel, apply a wingbolt to the screw end to hold the panel in place. Then put the gloves back on, pick up the next panel, and repeat. The vertical corrugation means that you fit the first corrugation of each panel over the last in the previous panel, so that they overlap in a way that locks the covering. It's really a very clever, simple solution, getting the most out of the materials: http://www.hurricaneshuttersflorida.com/storm_shutters_miami.html
I did mention, though, that they're heavy. And they fit tightly. And a typical small window requires three or four panels, and a large window needs a dozen or so. Last year, when we put them up, it was blazing sunshine, high humidity, and temperatures in the 90s. I could just about manage ten or fifteen minutes at a stretch before I had to take a break in the air conditioning, gasping and trying not to keel over.
But this year. Ah, this year.
I woke up to the sound of Missy making espresso, and rain on the roof. We started getting the storm's 'feeder bands' yesterday afternoon -- some wind, and lots and lots of heavy rain. Missy headed out to the grocery store, and I looked at the thermometer, whooped with delight, and threw on clothing. The temperature had plummeted -- to the mid 70s. (This is a very surreal thing for me to say.)
You see, Missy (being a Cat Person) hates to get wet -- that is, she hates getting rained on. It really doesn't bother me (a good thing for living in Seattle, or in south Florida for that matter), although I don't like being wet and cold. What I do hate, and suffer from, is not being able to be physically active outdoors because it's too damned hot. You see the lovely win-win situation that presented itself?
I spent a cheerful hour or so outdoors in the rain, hoisting hurricane shutters and feeling butch and virtuous (and not feeling miserably hot). By the time Missy got back from the store and saw what I'd been up to, I was more than two-thirds finished. It's amazing how much faster the work was when I didn't have to stop and recover from heat exhaustion every ten minutes!! I was soaked to the skin, and got rather a lot of water on Missy when she hugged me. Then she went inside and baked me a cake, and I finished getting the shutters up, with a very wide smug grin plastered all over my face.
I have a bit of an ache in my back now -- it's far and away the most strenuous activity I've had since the hike on the Appalachian Trail back in May (also in the rain). I still have a smug look on my face.
The house is rather cavelike with the shutters up, although we've left them off a few of the windows for now. We use more lights indoors, but it's easier for the AC to cool the house once they're up, since there's a pocket of dead air over each window and a layer of steel reflecting away the sunlight. (I think we about break even on power usage.) Once up, the shutters stay up until hurricane season ends -- after Thanksgiving. It's usually a lot cooler by the time we're taking them down.
As I mentioned last year, if a storm actually hits us, I may be offline for one or more days. The electricity here goes out even when there aren't any hurricanes going on, so nobody expects it to stay up when a storm hits. The first service to come back is usually cell phones. If we get hit, as soon as the storm has passed, I will get word out by cell phone to my sister, who has access to this journal and can let everyone know that we're okay.
Meanwhile, the projected track of Isaac has now wobbled away from us again. I'm really glad I don't live in the Florida panhandle or on the Gulf Coast. Those who do, you will be in my thoughts, and I hope you stay safe.