Florida Weather

I was just going to respond to Chris Seibold’s blog mention about weather in Florida, but decided that it was blog-worthy all on it’s own.

The weather in Florida CAN be pretty unusual. Most weather forcasters there hedge their bets and say, “Could be some rain today folks”, and the natives yawn and say “No excrement sherlock”. The rainstorms mostly last no longer than 15-30 minutes and vary between the light drizzle that makes the more whimsical of us want to go run around in, to torrential downpours that make the more cautious take out those Ark plans “just in case”. I was cutting the grass once at my parent’s house and I had the odd pleasure of seeing it rain in buckets in the front and dry in the back.

Hurricanes can be devestating to any area they hit, but Florida seems to be the place where most people think of that kind of danger. Oddly enough, most of the hurricanes of the last few years have hit the Carolinas more often than not and I had the dubious pleasure of going through a hurricane in Northern Virginia last year. Fortunately by the time it hit our area, it had weakened considerably. Still knocked out our power for a day and some places were weeks before recovering.

My experiences with hurricanes is kind of varied. I was born during Hurricane Donna in September of 1960 and went through two others as a small boy (1964 and 1967..I think). What I remember most about them was the sound of the wind howling through the area and the flooding afterwards. My Father and my oldest brother on my Mother’s side (That is a story for another day) would tape up the windows the day before the storm. I don’t recall much damage afterwards, but as a small boy, unless it affected me directly I ignored it. As I remember, these were relatively minor 200 mile wide storms (as if). The only other one that came close was Hurricane David in 1980 that passed off the east coast about 50 miles away. The reason why I remember that one was because all the surfers hit the beach because Lauderdale FINALLY got something that resembled waves (5-8 foot high).

I left in 81 and wasn’t in South Florida when the big one hit (Andrew) in 92. By a strange coincidence, once Andrew left the Florida area and was churning up through the Gulf of Mexico, my wife and I were getting married in Northern Virgina at an outdoor service. Our weather was great that day because Andrew sucked all the moisture to the south. Of course everyone else’s life was miserable, but at least we had a nice day.

South Florida was devestated by that hurricane, but it wasn’t all because of the severity of the storm. Since no other hurricanes had hit the area in almost 20 years, building practices had become quite lax. Throw in the corruption of the Dade County building inspectors and it was a disaster (literally) waiting to happen.

Of course the nice thing about hurricanes (if the word “nice” and “hurricane” can be used in the same sentence), is that you know when they’re coming. You have lots of advance notice unless you’re a complete idiot, unlike tornados which come and go with very little warning. The thing you really have to look out for in Florida as far as weather goes is not hurricanes, tornados, or plagues of locusts. The thing to watch out for is lightning. More people are killed or injured by lightning in Florida than any hurricane. Not much warning for it either. If you are outside when a thunderstorm hits, IMMEDIATELY find shelter. Especially on the west coast of Florida. Fort Myers is known as the Lightning Capital of the world. This is not something to fool around with.

I have lived in the Northern Virginia area now for almost 20 years, but not a day goes by that I don’t miss Florida. Even with the hurricanes, lightning, daily rain storms, and palmetto bugs (think large flying roaches). Someday I’ll go back there to live. I just hope the big developers leave something of it for me to return to.