Harvey, where are you going?

This is not a post that I intended to do, it’s just happening.  We’re waiting on Hurricane Harvey to arrive, but we’re not sure where he’s going.  I don’ think he is either! With each update the path seems to change.  Regardless, South Texas is ready and we are waiting.

I just had a flashback to tracking hurricanes on a paper chart during the late 1980’s and through the 1990’s.  I always used a pencil that could be erased, although I left the marks for Hurricane Andrew as I had tensely charted it knowing that hubby could be in it’s path.  It would change it’s path and become a Category 5 hurricanne bringing terrible destruction.  I would wait for each update with paper chart and pencil ready.  My source was either the local news or the Weather Channel.  Long before the NHC and NWS were always a click away.

I had another flashback to 1969 when we were visiting my grandparents north of Jackson, Mississippi that August. I was a young teenager and oblivious to any tropical storm in the Gulf; I was just loving my time with my grandparents. When my mother suddenly went into packing mode and announced that I needed to get my things together I was puzzled as to why we were heading home.  The response was that Daddy had been watching a tropical storm in the Gulf of Mexico and thought it best for us to head home.  It was a good decision because had we waited we would have been riding out Hurricane Camille, also a Category 5 hurricane.

September 1961:  we had just returned from overseas, drove cross country in our little Volkswagen Beetle arriving in San Antonio Texas to settle into our new home.  We were greeted by Hurricane Carla, a Category 3 storm.  I can still remember the relentless rain and trying to get in and out of the car.

Final memory, only I don’t remember this one.  My mother and her small daughter rode out Hurricane Audrey in Alexandria Louisiana; my father had been tapped to fly out an airplane to a safer base.  Save the plane, please.  My mother accepted it as part of being a military wife and having grown up experiencing hurricanes. She reminded me of having done this when Hurricane Katrina was approaching and told me the wild story of driving to the store in the pre-hurricane rains to get milk and ice. When Daddy was able to get back to the base they evacuated for 2 weeks only to come home to several inches of water in their house. Yes, they rode out Katrina!

So Harvey, where are you and what are you going to bring? Today I watch on the internet to find out where hurricanes are, I see live pictures on television and the web cams. Accurate forecasting keeps me informed even if the storm seems to wander. Times have changed, but hurricanes still bring their destruction and are not to be ignored.