This is gonna be a bitch.
Hurricane Helene is expected to slam into the Florida coast tomorrow, as a Category 4 hurricane. Then she’s predicted to slide up the East coast affecting Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina.
Category 4 is bad. Real bad. As in ‘run like Hell’ bad. They have maximum sustained winds between one hundred and thirty (130) and one hundred and fifty-six (156) miles per hour (209 – 251 kilometers per hour). The storm surge, when the sea level rises above normal tide levels, can run four to five feet. That causes tons of flooding. Power lines go down. Utilities, like water and communications, get disrupted. Any food you have in the refrigerator goes bad. It can take weeks sometimes to get all these systems up and running again.
I’ve been through more than enough hurricanes in this lifetime and don’t feel the need to go through any more. We do have a tradition in our family, though. When I was a kid, we lived in New Orleans, Louisiana. A major hurricane, I don’t remember which one, was going to slam the coast and we made a run for it. We went north, but the hurricane sat on our tail the entire time. We pulled off to some little rinky-dink motel in the middle of nowhere to ride it out. Two adults, five kids, and the dog, all crammed in one hotel room. My Mom, in charge of bringing food provisions, had baked a cake and brought it. Nothing else. Just the cake. So, it is now tradition in our family that when a hurricane is coming, you bake a cake.
If you happen to be in the path of Helene, my Hordeling, please be safe. I hope you’ve been able to make a run for it, and if not, you are safely sheltered in place.
See you on the other side.
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