MOBILE, Alabama — For those of us on the central Gulf Coast, the ritual of tracking hurricanes involves a strange psychological tug of war between “been-there/done-that” disdain and a just-beneath-the-surface feeling of gnawing nervousness.
Modern meteorologists have become so accurate so often with storm-track forecasts that sometimes, we ignore their warnings that these tempests can change rapidly. If, five days from landfall, we in Mobile are told the quite likely track is for the eye to aim at New Orleans, 150 miles west-southwest of us, with maximum likely sustained winds of a weak Category 1 storm (about 75 miles per hour), we tend to shrug.
Yeah, we know that the vaunted “east side” of most of these gales is where the worst rain and storm surge will be, so even a New Orleans landfall will still likely give us some low-lying street flooding and some downed tree limbs. But those possibilities leave us almost blase. Sometimes, we handle such results even from pop-up summer squalls.
Then again, it seems as if roughly a quarter of the named storms do change projected tracks even when the meteorologists sound most certain of their forecasts, and a somewhat overlapping quarter of them strengthen unexpectedly. We darn well know that, but we act otherwise. If the current track doesn’t include us, well, we’ll wait until it hits somewhere else and then see if help is needed in the aftermath.
So, then, even though we know better, we can let ourselves get caught off guard. I spent the last three days in studied nonchalance, keeping one loose eye on what is now Hurricane Sally but pretending to be merely an objective observer. Now — wow! — the storm’s own eye may be looking at me. Sally has strengthened considerably, already with sustained winds at 90 with projections of it rising to 105. Worse for my family, the track has shifted eastward toward nearby Biloxi, with Mobile Bay now in the vaunted “cone” of possibility and sure to get at least a 4-foot storm surge no matter where landfall technically occurs.
Worse, if the projected path moves another 45 miles eastward, we may be not just where the eye crosses, but in the veritable pupil. That storm surge could reach 8-10 feet, and old pines and water oaks could come crashing down all over Mobile County. As soon as I post this column, I’ll need to pull inside anything from our little yard that could become a projectile and rush around town, seeking supplies I should have bought three months ago.
The pulse quickens. The feeling is about three-fifths excitement and two-fifths dread born of the memories of monsters such as Camille and Katrina. Luckily, the strong likelihood remains that in most of Mobile County and especially in my neighborhood on a hill 184 feet above sea level, Sally will be a big annoyance and cause a few hours of power outages but nothing deadly.
Still, I look out the window and already see quick gusts bend the elephant-ear plants in odd directions, and I can literally feel the barometric pressure start to drop. There’s a weird anticipatory sensation, something like when one is in midleap into a spring-fed pool without having first checked to feel how cold the water is.
Yes, we hate these storms and wish they would fizzle into nothing. And now, we’re starting to really worry about this one. But a good scare can teach us not to be too cocky. Meanwhile, please pray that for as many people as possible, this thing turns out to be no more than just a scare.
