Living in the Tampa Bay area you learn that it has been over 100 years since we’ve been hit with a major hurricane.
We’ve had a few close calls. Hurricane Charley in 2004 was aimed straight at Tampa Bay until it turned slightly east and hammered Fort Myers. There have been other close calls. Everyone knows that the luck can’t last forever. Around September-October the hurricanes tend to form further west, either starting in or making their way into the Gulf of Mexico. Atlantic storms might head back out into the ocean, but once a storm gets into the Gulf it’s going to hit someone. For the last 100 years, Tampa Bay has been lucky.
That luck may have run out. It’s been a week and a half since Hurricane Helene passed 100 miles offshore on its way north to wreck the Carolinas. Even that far offshore it has been the most destructive storm to hit the Tampa Bay region in over 100 years. I’ve got a few friends who were flooded out of their places and the cleanup will take a while. Now we’ve got tropical storm Milton aimed at us, which is predicted to hit the west coast of Florida in a few days as a major hurricane. We are dead center of the current track but the models currently put landfall anywhere on the west coast of Florida.
I sometimes need to be reminded that most natural disasters are unpredictable. Earthquakes and tornadoes just happen with little warning. I’m more familiar with hurricanes which typically give a few days warning. We schedule our weeks around them. “I’ll go into the office on Monday, do some shopping on the way home, order pizza on Tuesday, and then settle in for Wednesday’s hurricane.” It’s a bit surreal. I’m reminded of living in New York when we knew a big snowstorm was going to hit. The streets would empty out and as the first snow was falling there would be an eerie silence and emptiness outside.
I hope the storm misses us. I hope it does minimal damage wherever it does land. If it does wreck our shit, I at least hope that we’re all safe and sound afterwards. I hope you are too.