If there’s one thing I do not miss about living in Florida, it’s all the damn hurricanes.  As we saw just last week, it doesn’t take long for these storms to come barreling out of the Caribbean to wreak havoc on the Florida peninsula (as well as other southern states).

Hurricane season runs from June 1^st to November 30 each year, and if you live in a coastal area down south (or literally anywhere in the Sunshine State), you pay much more attention to the weather report in the late summer and early fall than most of the rest of the country.

Add in the 24-hour news cycle, and if there’s even a hint of a storm tracking towards Florida, the weather stations and meteorologists start foaming at the mouth with their round the clock storm coverage and tracking updates.  You’ve probably seen the memes – if you hear Jim Cantore of ‘The Weather Channel’ is heading towards your neck of the woods, it may be time to batten down the hatches, because it’s about to get dicey.

I can tell you from experience, living through the run-up to a storm is quite stressful.  There’s so much to think about and do.  Top off the gas tank, get that last grocery run in, make sure to have lots of batteries on hand, fill up the tub with water (for drinking and other uses post-storm), get some cash from the ATM – the list goes on and on.  Now imagine everyone around you trying to do the same thing.  Yes, it’s chaos.

Then there’s one’s property.  Should I board up the windows?  Should I evacuate?  What about my job – will they even let me leave before the storm?  What about the family?  Should we evacuate or make the decision to “ride it out”?

Being in the IT field as a career, I rarely had a choice back in my Florida days.  I was usually forced to ride out the storm onsite and make sure the systems stayed online, either leaving my wife and young kids at home to deal with the storm on their own or sending them off to be with other relatives and out of harm’s way.

Sure, the wind, rain, and potential flooding are all hazardous, but it’s also the aftermath of a storm that causes problems as well.  Extended power outages, downed trees, fuel shortages, and insurance claims weigh heavily on the minds of Florida homeowners and renters.  With more and more insurer’s fleeing the state, that means even if you do have coverage, it will cost a pretty penny.  Oh, did I forget to mention all the shady contractors that appear like maggots once the wind dies down to prowl the neighborhoods and run their post-storm repair scams?  Yeah, there’s that, too.

I’ve ridden out a ‘Category 2’ storm at my former Florida abode – once.  I’ll never do it again.  The whole family was huddled in the middle of the living room – away from all of the windows, listening to the wind and rain howl outside as we waited for the windows to shatter, the roof to be ripped off, or the giant camphor tree in our back yard to come crashing into the house.  I don’t recommend it.  That was in 2004, when four named storms battered Central Florida in just six weeks.  It was one of the deciding factors in our eventual exit from all of that “southern sunshine” to move back to the four-state area.

I’m once again reminded of all of those stressful times because my youngest is now calling Central Florida home, and she got to experience her first “near miss” of a major storm last week, as well as all of the activities as described above.  My wife and I calmly talked her through the process on many phone calls, and I’m happy to report she came through safe and sound.

She gained some valuable experience with this latest storm event, and without a doubt she’ll have to use what she’s learned on multiple future occasions.

After all, it’s only September.