The top two bands..top right.

When they slammed into our house.

The house shook, shuddered a bit.

House seriously vibrated.

Sounds were incredible.

Roar of the ocean off in the distance

... was heard between strong cells.

To the South...

I had a friend locked in her closet with her baby.

Husband, a best friend

Sat up all night with his back against the door.

I have a daughter-in-law who lived in Palmetto...

in a tub with a mattress over her & her mother.

Her father sitting against the door holding it.

As parts of the house blew away.

My son's girlfriend ...

her mother was pregnant with her

in the bathroom... 

..in the tub with a mattress.

Father holding door ...

..as the parts of the roof were ripping away.

Also in Palmetto

I say this repetitively...

...because if the house starts falling apart.

Yes... you go to the bathtub

with a mattress over you.

And you pray.

And records from 1926 Miami Hurricane

show.. ppl hid in the bathtub

blankets, mattresses whatever.

It's easy to say evacuate, not everyone can and not everyone will. Not everyone has to but a hurricane can go from Cat 1 to Cat 3 and then Cat 5 sometimes rapidly doing rapid intensification and suddenly you are dealing with a beast that was not kind like Erin and did not stay offshore and rearranged all the trees on your street, ripped huge ficus trees up out of the ground up and down my block on Miami Beach with their roots and parts of the grass hanging at odd angles like some monster from another planet crashed onto your block in the middle of Hurricane Andrew. A friend's neighbor's roof landed in her pool on Pine Tree Drive...whole roof just floating in her pool and all over the yard. 

The dark night of a Major Hurricane is like one run on sentence punctuated by transformers popping and things going slam in the middle of the night as they hit your house or rip the shingles from your roof and the sound of the hurricane moaning, screaming, howling. It's wild. Memorable. 

And to be honest we worried on water and storm surge and the house leaking and the house did not leak; there were few puddles even and the street was littered everywhere with signage from Arthur Godfrey Road a few blocks away and power was out for a long, long time. 

My friend holding the door shut to the closet in Kendall told me when we got together after, good thing you didn't come down to Kendall, no room in the closet for you and well ya ... Post Andrew get togethers comparing notes was a thing in 1992. Everyone had a story. 

And amazingly 13 years later to the day Hurricane Katrina formed off the East Coast of Florida and intensified as she moved towards our house in North Miami Beach on the mainland. But Katrina is a story for tomorrow.

The 2005 Cone for Katrina.

1st advisory

Jim Edds is a great storm chaser.

A good guy, a friend.

Love his post on X

Hurricanes Happen.

You can prepare.

You can evacaute.

You can hunker down.

But you need Hurricane Supplies.

You need a plan!

Get a plan!

Now while it's slow and quiet.

Worst case scenarios do come true.