Hurricane Alex

An Assignment for my Geology class.

I remember the moment when the man on the news said there was a hurricane watch because of how unaffected I felt by his statement. A hurricane watch: possible hurricane or hurricane-related hazards within 36 hours. That’s the information Google gave me anyway. I remember thinking, “yeah whatever, there’s always possible hurricane threats, it’s Miami” and I indifferently continued my day.

Now, ironically, 36 hours later my sister and I are stuck in a shelter somewhere in Jacksonville. Our parents got trapped under the stairs in the basement and our dog likely drowned. So it’s just me, my sister Jo and this old lady who used to live next door. We never really knew her but somehow we ended up together and decided there was more comfort in numbers, especially since we don’t really know what’s going to happen next. Jo has been painting a surreal aerial view of a hurricane for the past few hours and just as she had finished the red-purple-brown undercoat on her canvas, Mrs Jenkins, who had been knitting this off-white coloured scarf, dropped her ball of wool directly onto the wet paint. Indifferent to the wool fibres that had been transferred to her painting, Jo picked it up and handed it back to Mrs Jekins, who continued her knitting without a word.

They said that Hurricane Alex caused an immense amount of damage to the city of Miami. Whole cars and houses were submerged under what was the heaviest rainfall I have ever experienced, even for Miami. Most houses had collapsed and if you hadn’t already evacuated before it hit then it was a slim chance that you were getting out easily. We got extremely lucky but we had to leave everything behind. With 74 miles per hour, wind speeds debris was flying all over the place and we were lucky to have not been hit by the flying pieces of wood that had once been our coffee table leg.

When we were little, Jo and I used to hide under that table and pretend we were camping. Our mother would throw blankets over the top that acted as curtains and we would let our imaginations run wild. I remember Jo had created this whole scenario where we were camping in the wilderness and watching for bears or deer while we took turns telling ghost stories. Although our mother, who we pretended was a bear coming to attack our tent, would interrupt our storytelling to bring us cookies and milk.

I’ve been spending most of my time in this shelter reminiscing about childhood memories. It brought me comfort, and I never want to forget them. Even though our parents were gone, their memory was very much alive. I could hear my father’s deep heavy voice telling us that everything was going to be ok.

I used to love it when the water at the beach was warm but according to Mrs Jenkins, warm ocean water is the culprit for energizing hurricanes since it causes more evaporation making the air and clouds humid. The heavy winds collect and flow outward above the storm allowing the hot air below to rise, while it is steered by the light winds collecting on the outside. I was incredibly bored and my phone had died hours ago so I was lying on the uncomfortable shelter cot staring at the ceiling, counting how many rectangular fluorescent lights hung from it. 40. Although, I shouldn’t complain when many many others were sleeping on tiny mattresses in gymnasiums bordering the hurricane site.

Mrs Jenkins used to teach geology at our local high school and claims to know everything there is to know about hurricanes and she had decided that I should know it all too. And so, acting in place of my high school geology teacher, Miss Danielle, while knitting that off-white, paint-covered scarf, lectured me about the eyewalls and eyes, the vortex that rotates counterclockwise, and something called the Coriolis Effect. She explained the latter as being the “pattern of deflection taken by objects not firmly connected to the ground as they travel long distance around and above the Earth” and is responsible for many large-scale weather patterns. She also mentioned that part of the reason we were flooded so heavily was due to the storm surge, or a flood caused by the rise in sea level.

Exciting.