Once when I was a child, my English war-bride mom told me about watching approaching German bombers — and knowing there was nothing anyone could do to stop the bombs that were coming.
I’m relating to that feeling as I sit here directly in the path of Hurricane Milton as it approaches.
Fortunately, Mrs Beatty and I live on the Florida east coast, not on the west coast in the Tampa Bay area where I grew up — and where members of my family reside — and which will take the full force of the storm as it makes landfall from strengthening in the Gulf. One family member there had her home flooded by Hurricane Helene just two weeks ago, and Milton will likely be worse.
But even here on the east coast, we anticipate sustained hurricane winds and a lot of rain. So, like my mom when the German bombers came, we will hunker down, wait for it to pass over us.
For us natives, this ain’t our first meteorological rodeo. When we built our current home, in 1989, it was designed for this — so hopefully it will survive.
We’re far enough from the Atlantic, that storm-surge is not an issue. Past flooding has not effected our property — again, because of how we’ve landscaped to direct run-off away from the house.
Loss of power is the likely worst issue we will have to deal with. Though we have a generator, if the outage lasts too long, replacing the fuel to run it becomes an issue.
For new Florida residents, however, the hurricanes we’ve had over the past few years (Michael, Ian, Idalia, Helene) have been a stark dose of the reality of mother nature. Those who come here to live directly on the coast — and who have driven up the cost of beachfront homes to ridiculous prices — are learning that “every form of refuge has its price.”
Others have moved into the newly built high-end subdivisions that are spreading like a fungus across the landscape (also at inflated prices) that are interrupting the ability of the terrain to absorb rain and allow natural run-off. So even away from the coastal storm surge there is increasing flooding.
In the mid-1970s, when Jimmy Buffet lived in Key West, he recognized the human encroachment upon Florida and sang,
Mobile homes smothering the keys, I hate those bastards so much
I wish a summer squall would blow them all away up to fantasy land…
Fantasyland being Orlando — the home of the mouse that ate central Florida. The overpopulation is far worse than it was when Jimmy sang that. Orlando is now in the direct path of Milton, and 40 miles closer to the Gulf that we are here and, with all the new residential building around it, can expect severe flooding.
A fellow native, country musician John Anderson, is from Apopka — which is also in the direct path. In what many natives consider the unofficial Florida state song, after lamenting that humans have “made their plans, and drained the land,” he sang,
Blow, blow Seminole Wind, blow like you’re never going to blow again
Blow, blow across the Okeechobee, all the way up to Micanopy
Milton is going to blow across the peninsula between the Okeechobee and Micanopy. Some of us natives see this as divine intervention to stem the migration and overbuilding. Hopefully it will discourage any more from moving here.
The local media, of course, are in a frenzy — and it’s working. Grocery stores shelves are empty, as are the gas stations pumps.
You can easily tell the natives from the transplants. When the latter ask about evacuation, the former will usually say “Where do you plan to evacuate to?” — leaving the latter dumbfounded. They don’t understand that evacuation ain’t as easy as the media makes it sound.
Imagine riding out the storm at an Interstate rest area because there is no place to stay when you get to your evacuation destination. Nor being able to get gas to drive anywhere else. Those situations are not unusual.
If we foolishly lived in an area subject storm-surge, we’d leave. But we don’t, so we won’t.
The smarter among the transplants have made an effort to get acquainted with their neighbors who are natives, and have listened to our advice about long-term preparation for hurricane season. One of my transplant neighbors put up his shutters after he saw us putting up ours. They aren’t absorbed in the media frenzy.
So that’s the status of Mrs Beatty and I as of 1800 hrs EDST on Tuesday, October 8. By this time tomorrow we expect to be within the leading bands of the storm — and in the center of it by midnight.
Since we expect to lose power, we’ll likely be (literally) off the grid for an indeterminate time thereafter.
“If the phone doesn’t ring, you’ll know that it’s me,
I’ll be out in the eye of the storm”