Arlene

Every year on June 1st, the back of my mind starts it's wheels to turning, and they don't stop turning until November 30th. You see, I grew up in Florida. For 18 years, the time from June 1st to November 30th was a "dark, walk-on-eggshells" kind of time. Then I moved to Alabama for college and then to Virginia for the "real world." In my 27 years of life, I have never (knock on wood) been through a hurricane, but I sure have lived in fear of them. The closest I ever came to experiencing one I was 9 years old and in the 4th grade. Hurricane Floyd reared his ugly head and was actually headed straight for us, but at the last minute, he changed his mind and clipped the southern tip of Florida on his way out to the Atlantic. Hurricane Andrew had his sights set on making a treck across Southwest Florida from Homestead, but he changed his mind, too. This kind of stuff makes you numb by about the time you turn 10. In fact, when Hurricane Isabel threatened the DC Metro area a couple years ago, I really didn't flinch. I went into Hurricane preparedness mode and started handing out pointers to everyone. Whether you've been through one or not, in Florida you're conditioned to know every preparedness step there is. Isabel turned out to be a lot less interested in us and a lot more interested in Richmond and the Virginia and Maryland coasts. Then, the 2004 Hurricane season arrived........

I didn't expect it to be as active as it was. You never really do when you've been through as many uneventful seasons as I have. You see, I grew up in a town that I've known about since 1981, but not too many people outside of the general vacinity knew about it until last year. I grew up in Charlotte County: Hurricane Charley's landfall point. The season didn't stop there, and unless you lived under a rock last year, you know that Florida seemed to be the prime target for all the storms. Go figure...I make it through 26 years of life before a Hurricane ever seriously threatened my home town and then in one year at least 3 storms were, at one time, headed straight for it. I wasn't there for the storm, but my family still lives there and they survived along with minor damage to the house. In the grand scheme of things, they were lucky. Thousands of people are still living in trailers waiting for their new homes to be built, and here we are at the beginning of a new hurricane season........

I monitor the National Hurricane Center website every day during Hurricane Season: watching for storms, checking their tracks, and praying I don't see a track heading for my home nor anyone else's home. Today, the first Tropical Storm was named for the Season. Allow me to introduce Arlene. Hurricanes are by far the deadliest storms out there. Each hurricane carries with it all types of weather except for snow. When a hurricane makes landfall it drops rain, wind, hail, and even tornadoes along its path, making it difficult to know what to expect next. Arlene isn't expected to become a Hurricane before she makes landfall (currently predicted somewhere around Gulf Shores, AL or Orange Beach, AL about mid-day Saturday), but considering how much prediction actually became truth last year, I'll reserve the right to be skeptical. I've never been all that afraid of things in my life, but if I had to make a short list, hurricanes would be pretty close to the top.

With that said...May God whose only Son quieted the storms Himself watch over this world during Hurricane Season, and should any storm become deadly and destructive, may God be with the people in the storm's track.