New Orleans Style

More weather stories

Sweetheart and I were having lunch with a friend from Boston in a little cafe in the French Quarter. This is a place known only to locals, and Travelocity and travel guide books haven’t discovered it yet.

Someone mentioned that the first tropical tempest storm of the hurricane season had formed. This is one hobby we all have here—watching storms out in the ocean on the weather channel. Boston (our friend, who is actually quite famous so I will keep the name hidden here) had never been through a minor weather even, much less a ‘hurricane hurricane’. I joked that I thought it was decent of the weather gods that they were finally tossing out the first storm of the season, kind of like a first run movie. We don’t get too excited about such things really (well, maybe a little), but our friend was quite in a panic.

 
Panic, since he was a rookie at this storm business, totally clueless as to what one does to get ready for one of these monster events.

 
Landfall turned out to be some 65 miles west of us. But of course as the storm approached nobody knew that was going to be the case.

 
Since then, our friend has always checked the weather reports before flying down from Boston to visit. Now quite wise to the ways of developing hurricanes.

 
Once you’ve seen lawn furniture flying across the yard, you develop a certain routine and rhythm for approaching storms. While it’s still offshore, go to bed but only if you are expecting some windy rain, not a tornado touching down not too far away. Sometimes if you sleep too deeply you awake to the carpet soaked because you didn’t board up strong enough and the wind blew the rain under the exterior doors.

 
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