My First Hurricane

Prelude

I've lived through earthquakes, flash floods, dust storms, wind storms, tornado storms, crazy lightning, heat lighting, freezing rain, and blizzards. I've lived in places with tsunami watches and volcano eruptions.

But I've never lived anywhere that has hurricanes.

Here in Puerto Escondido, in Southern Mexico, I'm being introduced.

Note: I'm breaking from my normal style here, and instead just writing up little bits as they happen. No editing later summations - just day by day, what it's like.

The experience is a strange one. A friend asked if I was scared. The truth is, I'm too ignorant to be scared. I have no idea what this is going to be like.

Just that it's coming.

1 pm

After a few days of watching, the storm in the Gulf of Tehuantepec has made up its mind. It's gathering its forces and heading inland. I've been watching on the NOAA's site, soaking in the delightfully strange language: "the storm continues to show signs of organization".

They now project it'll hit us by 6pm.

It's now time to stock up on water and food, make sure my cell's paid for, and preparing the house for the storm.

3 pm

We just boarded up the windows downstairs.

Here on the upper floor, there are no boards, so if it gets crazy, I'm going to need my parkour balance to get down the exposed stairway and into the ground-level apartment.

The wind's starting to pick up, in huge gusts, and this storm is moving from something I saw on a computer screen to something outside my window.

Hurricanes are strange in this way: they announce their arrival. They're too big to bother with surprise.

Latest reports from an hour down the coast have this as very heavy rain, and medium-strong wind. Hoping it stays that way.

3:30 pm

Everything's closed up. I've brought the outside dog in to my apartment, and we're settling in.

Now, we wait.

3:35 pm

Started following the NOAA on twitter. I mean, what else do you do, in times like these?

Evidently this one's going to be called Carlos. I once lost a girlfriend to a guy named Carlos. He and I were cool, years later. Neither of us would talk to the girl.

It's also now official. Three-E is officially a Tropical Depression. Hurricane forces are expected within 36 hours.

4 pm

Across the street, construction of a new house continues unabated. Either nobody's told them about the storm, or (more likely) they don't care.

Things that do care, though: the birds. They're everywhere here, and I haven't seen or heard one in two hours.

Besides the construction, it's eerie quiet. No traffic, no music, nobody driving by selling tortillas on a loudspeaker. There aren't even any dogs barking. Mexico is really, really weird when it's quiet.

Me, the guys, Fiji the dog, and a baby gecko on the wall are settled in, waiting to see what comes.

6:30 pm

Still silent. The radar shows the storm raging for a hundred miles in every direction, but here, still calm. Projections also show it turning toward us tonight, and coming inland. Could be a loud and wet evening.

10pm

Still quiet. Internet says Carlos has paused, and is now making up his mind. Some projections have him turning towards us and making landfall on Sunday (seeing as I live 150 feet from the ocean, landfall has taken on a new meaning), another has his center staying offshore.

Hoping that the locals are right. They say it's a good thing he's a man. The women are always more deadly.

Day Two, 8 am

The rain has started, but it's still light. The future-Carlos is hanging out off the coast, not moving much. This is both good and bad. The longer he hangs out and drifts, the more likely he is to miss us. But the stronger he'll get.

Looking around this morning at the brick (and less) homes around me, I'm hoping for a miss.

Day Two, 11am

Carlos is now officially a Tropical Storm.

But here, it's now sunny, with a patchwork of clouds. The birds are back. The bugs are back. The dogs are barking again.

I think this one goes down as "near miss".

The strangest thing about hurricanes is their unpredictability. You know they're coming, but not precisely where or when or even how.

Watching this online, even the world's best climate modeling simulations don't agree on the path. Nationally-funded algorithms argue about high and low pressure patterns, and their effects on the nascent hurricane.

He's still out there, but from the looks of things, drifting away.

Day Four

Carlos is a hurricane now, punctuated in the strange ellipsised weather bulletins from the NOAA.

...CARLOS STILL MEANDERING SOUTH OF MEXICO... ...CARLOS REFUSES TO MOVE MUCH... ...OUTER BANDS OF CARLOS AFFECTING THE SOUTHERN COAST OF MEXICO...

Carlos is still out there, getting bigger and bigger, meandering up the coast. Here in Puerto, we're safe other than some mild winds and a bunch of rain.

But up in Baja? They're starting to worry like we were, just worse. Will he hit? Will he turn? Will he just hang out and keep getting stronger?

Nobody knows.

That's been my takeaway about dealing with hurricanes. Nobody knows.

They're almost unfathomably large. At one point, the storms that make up what we've named "Carlos" were hundreds of miles wide. They were the size of states, the size of entire countries.

Carlos hit the coastline where I live in hundred-mile storms.

But weather is so complex that the small details always matter. The little point I live on seemed be a natural barrier for the storm. We still got (and are still getting) a lot of rain, but areas not even ten miles away got blasted.

The next storm though, who knows. It could be the opposite.

As Carlos spins away, I'm coming to the conclusion that hurricanes are just like life.

Make the best plans you can, do what's possible, then let it go.

Everything big is out of your control anyhow.