well, you were the one who signed the deed

i lived in florida for the first seventeen years of my life. born in nineteen-eighty-something, i have experienced incredibly disgusting weather. during the summers, it has gotten up to 115 degrees in 100% still-dripping wet- humidity. it feels for most of the year that you are renting gum space in a gingivitis-infested mouth. then we get about three weeks of decent fall weather, a week at a frosty 54 degrees for our winter season, and then BAM summer is here again.

spring doesn't exist in florida. it has been phased out completely because really, it just got in the way and always copied fall. that bitch was ousted.

so anyway, because our prominent season, summer, ruled the place, he decided like the dick that he is that when he had to give way to fall, he would make sure that transition was something fall had to earn rather than just be handed to (he was technically the one who voted out spring due to the fact that she had grown tired of their relationship and was beginning to crush on fall, and summer got PISSED). and this is what we know of today as the southeast's hurricane season.

the atlantic's season began on june 1st, ends on november 30th. if there's not much activity out there, we get a lot of tropical storms and daily rainshowers. if the pressure systems are actively butting heads, they produce a hurricane. it's how it is, our hurricane days are comparable to the midwest's snow days, and yada yada yada... a downfall of living on a beautiful beach in charleston, south carolina in 1989 is

,

meet hugo. hurricane hugo. i had family who lived on the barrier islands for years, my great aunt and uncle. my uncle don loved crabbing and every time we went for a reunion or whatever we always got to eat pounds of crab. shit was good.

enter hugo.



do you see that??? those are sailboats on a house. SAILBOATS ON A HOUSE, PEOPLE. sailboats don't go there!! oh, and not to mention this...



doesn't look like those kids will be taking any "joyrides".

hugo was exceptionally bad, starting off as a category 5 and bouncing off islands from guadaloupe to puerto rico before making landfall on the isle of palms, south carolina. even though it had fallen to a category 4 by the time it hit it killed about 40 people and left 100,000 homeless. it was the most damaging hurricane at that time, causing 10 billion dollars of problems.

10 bilion. that's like, 17 billion nowadays, at least. that's like how much soderbergh gets paid.

since hugo, there have been ten category 5 hurricanes, about half of which have hit florida. the other half have gone gulfside (i mean who wouldn't? the yucatan is gorgeous this time of year), and one of those was one of the five deadliest hurricanes of all time - katrina.

in the wake of having a category 2 storm, irene, hit new york... i would like to touch on something. although i had a blast during the storm getting fucked up with natalie and listening to irene's pathetic rumbling on the other side of my (open) bedroom window, i know there was severe flooding and that this hurricane has taken 24 people's lives. i feel for the people who have lost homes, had property damage, known someone who has been hurt or has died during the ferocity of this type of natural disaster. it is the price we pay for living in certain areas of the country.

we sign up for where we live. like beaches? hurricanes. like country plains? tornadoes. like living on an active volcano? lava. earthquakes. kimodo dragons.

the weather channel warned you: if you live on staten island, you're going to flood. if you live in the LES or battery park or seaport, you are going to flood. manhattan is an island, people!!! it is SURROUNDED by WATER. IT IS GOING TO RUN THE RISK OF FLOODING, AND NOT JUST DURING A HURRICANE.

you signed the deed. doesn't mean that you deserve to die. but it does mean that you should listen to the weather channel.

braving the storms we got was a fun part of my childhood. we used to go out with helmets and baseball bats when it would hail. i never lived in a place that was crazy flooded like staten island or new orleans, but we got a little bit of lake overflow that was a bitch to clean up.

hurricane damage is shitty and slow to forget, and i'm sorry to all those who have ever lost anyone or anything to one. but next time, if you don't like the chance of having to brave a storm, then live in arizona. i hear it never rains there.

~k.