For those of you that don’t live in Florida or on the coast, Thursday was the first official day of the 2006 hurricane season. Hurricane season runs from June 1 to December 1, a full six months. Late July through September is the heaviest part of the season. Of course, storms are possible all throughout the season.
It appears that Julie and I chose the perfect time to move to South Florida. The experts say that hurricane activity is cyclical and that we are now in an upswing in the cycle where hurricane activity is going to be high. And we got here just in time for the upswing. Great! Don’t we have excellent timing? Since we have been in South Florida, we have experienced: 1. a storm forming before June 1 (the official start of the season); 2. a storm forming after December 1 (the official end to the season) (both are supposed to be rare occurrences); 3. the first time EVER Florida has been hit by four storms in the same season (2004, Charley, Frances, Ivan and Jeanne) and 4. the first time all the hurricane names have been exhausted in a single season. We’ve experience a lot of history. We feel special.
Last year, as everyone knows, was one of the worst hurricane seasons ever. Everyone knows about Katrina’s effects on the Gulf Coast. What many people don’t realize is Katrina came through South Florida as “only” a category one storm before it got into the gulf and grew into the monster we all know. Last year also saw hurricane Wilma rip across South Florida very late in the year and do a lot of damage. Julie’s school was closed for a week and public schools were closed even longer. So even though we did not have near the catastrophe as New Orleans, it was a rough year for South Florida.
So Floridians and other people living in hurricane zones go into this season with a great deal of apprehension. While hurricanes should be taken very seriously, the beginning of hurricane season creates an amusing phenomenon around here. The media, print and TV, spend a lot of time talking about hurricanes and having your plans ready to go. We first experienced this phenomenon before we even moved here. We traveled to Miami in June before I started school to find an apartment. We experienced all of the hype of that official start to hurricane season and amount of time spent talking about it was surprising. That year, the big news was the 10th anniversary of Hurricane Andrew and the fact that in the two prior years, no hurricane had made landfall in the United States. That is significant because there has never been a three year period where a hurricane did not hit somewhere in the United States. Though Florida was spared that year, it proved to be true. All of the hype had an ominous foreshadowing to it. If only we had known what lie in store for us.
It is important to be prepared for a hurricane and have your supplies ready, but to hear some of the talking heads, if you don’t have a fully stocked hurricane kit by June 1, you might die. They’ve been even more hyper this year. The local NBC channel here televised a “town hall” a couple of nights ago. This show had a forecaster from the national hurricane center, various politicians and county emergency management officials. They talked about how people should be prepared, what to expect, etc. That type of show seems reasonable, right? It’s informative and performs a public service. But this show is an example of how little thought the media puts into these things. You see, Florida has a sales tax holiday for a week before hurricane season starts so people can buy certain things considered to be essential hurricane supplies (flashlights, batteries, sterno, etc.). But NBC did not run the town hall until the night before the last day of the tax holiday. That just strikes me as funny. They were imploring people to have a plan and be prepared, but they didn’t do the show in time for people to take advantage of the tax savings. Makes you wonder how genuine they were in doing the show.
Anyway, hurricane season is here. I’ll do my best to use this as a way to communicate if (ha ha, if) any hurricanes head our way and let you know how we are doing. So just sit tight and we’ll see what happens. In the meantime, I’m going to go buy some batteries.
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