In Which I Cope With Some Writing...(about Harvey)

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Sympathy for the Devil: Or, Why "Wrath" Cannot Describe The Storm

Like most hurricanes, Harvey had found landfall traumatizing. Beneath his spiraling rain bands, humans shook their fists at the sky and spoke breathlessly of his wrath. But in truth, Harvey was just as scared as they were. Land is an inhospitable environment for tropical cyclones, and Harvey’s supposed wrath was really more like the thrashing of a beached whale than the rage of an angry god.

Almost immediately after the steering flows had sent him crashing into the Texas Coast, he had been fighting for his life. He felt his circulation collapse, the winds that cycled the energy through his body imploding, like the gills of a fish out of water. Friction with the land scraped his belly open, creating swirls of tornadoes as his very lifeblood came pouring out in torrents. Panicked, he swung violently around and around, a fin lapping out at Corpus Christi, a spiral band knocking Matagorda Bay. He glanced back at the sea one last time before his eye clouded over. The water was just behind him. He could make it back! But the crushing pressure of the ridge overhanging the Gulf wouldn’t let him. He clashed against it and the ridge over Texas, their vortices grinding like gears.

Thoroughly trapped, he resigned himself to his imprisonment over the coastal prairies. He had no idea what to do. The ocean was the only home he had ever known. He missed the smell of the tropical breeze, the turquoise hue of the Carribbean Sea, the way the sun-kissed waves rose up in spirals of spindrift and vapor during the day, and how at night, stars twinkled above his eye, as the cool air above invigorated his convective breath. The land was cold, it was dry, it was oppressive. It got grit in his mouth and dust stains on his clouds. He hated, hated, hated the land.

A day passed. He lost hurricane status. Such was life. He reminisced how he had rapidly intensified over a Loop Current eddy. That had been really wonderful…he thought. No cold water upwelling, nothing but endless, endless warm ocean. His mouth watered at the thought, drooling a last bit of storm surge into Galveston Bay. His empty stomach rumbled with thunder. He cried. The rain poured over Houston.

More time passed. His ravenous hunger grew. He looked down at the floodwaters now raging through the bayous, swollen with the rain he had excreted. Once the latent heat was drawn from the water, a hurricane had no more use for the moisture. So they discarded it in great sheets, the remnants of tropical air long since digested.

I think it’s actually starting to evaporate again...he thought to himself hungrily, then slapped himself for thinking that. No way…I’m not drinking my own waste! I am not that desperate! I am NOT that desperate! I am NOT…that…desperate…

But of course, he was that desperate. His empty belly moaned for moisture. He needed to take the edge off his hunger. So he began to consume the evaporation off his own floodwaters, working it over and over in his digestive tract the way a rabbit eats its own waste. It was humiliating, yes. Like someone drinking their own urine. But what choice did he have? At least this way, he could hang on, clinging to life…

Dry air began to move in from the west. He inhaled a mouthful, and he coughed and spluttered. More dry air went down his throat, raw and painful. He tried to take another swig from the saturated ground, but still more dry air found its way down his gullet, displacing what little moisture he still had in his belly. He felt hollow on the inside, his clouds evaporating. Lightning flickered within, static enhanced from the dryness, and he cried out in pain from the heartburn. He could feel his heat engine winding down, the desert winds swirling about in his gut and making a noise like a toilet trying to flush when unfilled. He couldn’t take this anymore. He was so tired, so hungry. But he had to keep going. It was his mission to deliver the tropical heat to the polar regions. Without it, the planet wouldn’t be in balance. He wasn’t a quitter.

A wind shifted in the Gulf. He had a brief opening to the sea. Without thinking, he took it. He moved offshore, and began to gorge on the sweet, sweet water once more. He wasn’t ever going to be able to regain his once mighty strength, but he didn’t care. He knew full well what his mission entailed. Once he reached the poles, he would dissipate, giving up all his heat and moisture with his last breath, becoming just another wandering spirit, one of many weaving their way through the cold upper atmosphere.

I just want to taste the ocean air one last time…

I need to survive. I need to survive…hold on just a little longer…He told himself.

I need to survive. I need to survive…hold on just a little longer… the people of Texas said.

Lives intersected. Fates intertwined. A city held its breath.

Onwards the gears of the air grinded, awaiting an uncertain future.

Such is life.
=================================================================
For the record, I am not trying to minimize the effects of this disaster. I have friends and family trapped in there. It's just...ever since I was little, I coped with the uncertainty of the weather by personifying storms, and I figured might as well share how I do it...differently than most people.

[chaser1]

Sympathy for the Devil: Or, Why "Wrath" Cannot Describe The Storm

Three questions:
Do rabbits actually eat their own waste or was that creative license?
Did a hurricane cause you to have a really traumatic experience when you were younger?

[chaser1]

(There was a third question but I forgot what it was.... I'm sure it'll come to me a little later)

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Sympathy for the Devil: Or, Why "Wrath" Cannot Describe The Storm

Three questions:
Do rabbits actually eat their own waste or was that creative license?
Did a hurricane cause you to have a really traumatic experience when you were younger?

No rabbits do actually eat their own feces a second time to digest the cellulose in the plant fibers better.

Traumatic experiences? Nothing extremely serious. I have not lost my home or any family members yet. But I will say my mom was delivered to the hospital in a canoe to give birth to my sister when I was four. Allison happened when I was in kindergarten. I had to take cover from a tornado in elementary school. I got trapped outside in a blizzard with thunder snow in Utah as a child as well. And I have been forced to weather way too many floods to count. Then of course there was the hell that was evacuating from Rita (we actually made it out because my father works in Galveston so we know all the secret back roads. It still took way too long and required encountering some...rather creepy characters.) And right after Ike I went with my father back to Galveston to his workplace, and nearly ran into a downed power line...

Honestly I am just a really anxious person with a vivid imagination. Like I can't even sleep through a thunderstorm. I am really, really, really scared of storms in general. It doesn't take a hurricane to get me rattled. Just any thunderstorm that lasts longer than a hour. The thing is you never know what is going to happen, and that frightens me. I have been lucky so far, but every time I see lightning strike I worry I am next.

Basically I am fascinated by hurricanes because I am terrified of them. Science and storytelling are how I deal with it.

[chaser1]

Wow.... I mean seriously WOW! That explains a lot. I can really empathize through an appreciation & understanding of what a number of my friends felt and went through having survived Hurricane Andrew while literally walls and pieces of roof peeled away around them. Just goes to show 'ya how our human nature and the coping mechanisms unique to each of us are fascinating in and of themselves. Like many here, I share a fascination for hurricanes and severe weather in general. Chasing, intercepting and watching a storm play out is exhilarating to me. Though aware of the dangers, I'm rarely concerned about them (Hurricane Andrew was an exception) but I believe that in part comes from an analytical approach to understanding the science of the event and the decisions that go into how and where I can safely observe it take place. Regardless, we all know that (twice eaten rabbit) "s#^$ happens" LOL, and it's those few unexpected curve-balls that have occassionally caused fear to shape my decisions. In a way tasting fear is kinda like tasting Brussel Sprouts. You dont want to try 'em but in the end we all know it's good for us. Moral of the story? If you think the weather outside is really nasty, try some Brussel Sprouts..... they won't kill you but their taste might take your mind off the weather for that moment

[storm_in_a_teacup]

Don't try to read too much into it. I never got hurt, and none of my family members did either. (Funny story I actually was so bundled up in the snowstorm I felt hot. I basically just waited it out with my ski instructor under a tree...probably not the best place given the lightning but we were on mountaintops so I don't think there was any safe spot.) Didn't stop it from being scary through.

Now that I think about it though, my childhood is kinda a blur of severe weather events. I guess this is what I get for growing up in Texas.

I find it interesting that you actually seek that sort of thing out...it sort of just finds me. It follows me even when I travel. Like just in the past couple years I have been through an ice storm in Pennsylvania that covered everything in so much ice I had to skate out of a car that looked like a comet just to use the restroom in a Starbucks, a winter storm in Los Angeles that nearly knocked me headfirst onto the pavement with its wind, and of course there's now my hometown getting destroyed by Harvey. Fortunately I had to return to Los Angeles just before Harvey came...so he didn't quite manage to catch me.

There's also the fact Twister was the first movie I ever saw (my parents brought me with them to it when I was a toddler) so I guess that also influenced me. Though that being said, I don't find tornadoes as interesting as hurricanes. Mostly because the really short warning time always drove me nuts growing up. Nothing like having warning, but only enough time to cower in your hallway. It's basically the worst middle ground between hurricanes (where you know of them days ahead of time) and earthquakes (where there is no warning). It's enough time to worry about it, but not enough time to actually get out of the way...