In the spirit of hurricane preparedness, we’re ready but we’re also doing normal crap like playing World of Warcraft and going to work tomorrow. While my bro Anton and I grew up in central Florida, we currently reside in Hillsborough County which is way closer to the coast than we’re used to being for named storms.

My most prominent memories of hurricanes are from my final year of high school (2004) when we were visited by Charlie, Jeanne, Ivan, and Francis (not people) inside of a two month time frame. We basically boarded and taped up windows when the school year started and then left everything in place until Halloween for good measure.

My parents still cite Andrew, a Cat. 5 back in ’92, as being the most notable storm in their memories. I’m glad I was too young to care about that one (search “Hurricane Andrew” in Google Images, you’ll see what I mean; Andrew is a friggin’ legend).

We’re keeping tabs on local advisories. If an evacuation gets called for our zone, we’re outta here for sure. It’s okay—both Megan and the rest of our family live inland—Anton and I have places to evacuate to.

Family Fact: Our family doesn’t sleep during hurricanes that blow through at night. Instead, we sit on the couch in the dark listening to the wind shred the trees and watching the sky light up with irregular bursts of green light as transformers blow all over the area. Inland, our typical concern is tornadoes which can get kicked up around the edges of the cyclone. We talk about anything to keep each other awake until the worst danger has passed, no matter how long that takes, and then we go to bed. No one ever has work or school the next day, so everyone can sleep in anyway.

For now, we wait and see. We’ll have a better idea by Tuesday.

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UPDATE on 09/28/22:

Hurricanes Ian’s sustained wind speeds are 155 miles per hour (249 kilometers per hour). Dude, that’s wild.

It’s been cloudy in a storm-cloud way since yesterday. Yesterday there were scattered storms in central Florida (Lake-Orange County) with absolutely no wind where I was.

Today began with a light drizzling rain here in Orlando with very still air. Throughout the afternoon, winds have began picking up and, as storm bands crawl through, the wind speeds switch from being at a near standstill one moment to flattening the tops if the neighbor’s trees with a big boom against the side of our house, and it returns to a near standstill. The wind creeps me out the most.

We still have power–yay. For now. We’re basically guaranteed to lose power.

And now we wait longer.

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UPDATE on 10/01/22:

Hurricane Ian has come and gone. My family is all okay.

Tampa was largely spared, though I’m sorry for Sanibel Island, Fort Myers, Punto Gordo, etc. who took the hit instead.

I had 2 relatives in Tampa during the storm—(1) Anton who was on-call for work (he works for the department of health) and (2) my nephew who was registered for Team A for the hurricane plan at Tampa General Hospital on Davis Island (Team A workers report to the hospital before the hurricane, the hospital then goes into lock down, and Team A staff sleeps/works in the hospital for as many days as it takes until it’s safe outside after which the lock down ends and they are relieved by Team B).

Our prayers go out to the families of those who lost loved ones, homes, and/or livelihoods.