Hurricane Laura

We've had a couple of brushes with hurricanes since we moved to Houston. Of course, our first big storm was the storm of the decade, Hurricane Harvey. Last year, the much weaker Tropical Storm Imelda actually came closer to causing our house damage, flooding our street and partway up our front lawn. So, whenever we hear about a storm forming in the gulf, we perk up and pay attention.

Last week, there was an extremely unusual thing going on: two hurricanes forming in the gulf at once. One storm, Hurricane Marco was coming up from the Yucatan area, and looked like it was heading right for us. The other, Hurricane Laura, was way over by Florida, and looked like it would probably make landfall way over in Mississippi or Alabama. I went home from work for the weekend expecting Marco to be a big deal come Monday night.

Over the weekend, however, things changed. Marco fell apart, increase in wind shear weakened the storm, and it changed its course away from Houston as well. Monday night, the storm came ashore near the mouth of the Mississippi River as a weak tropical storm, and dissipated without doing much damage.

Laura, on the other hand, was now getting stronger and stronger, and headed our way. On Tuesday, this is what they were expecting out of Laura.

She should be a category 2 hurricane, and the cone of her passage looked like it would have Houston right on its edge.

And she was looking pretty scary:

This news had people in town on edge. They canceled school for Wednesday and Thursday, even though they'd only just begun this week. Everyone was struggling to get prepared for the possible worst. We got prepared with most of the things we needed for the storms of past years, and we picked up a few more supplies at the store over the weekend, so we were not in any dire need. However, on Tuesday morning, I wanted some bacon and eggs for breakfast, so I headed to the store to pick some up. As had occurred during the panic from Hurricane Harvey, the shelves at Kroger had been cleaned out of the non-perishables. Here's the bread aisle:

Must be a lot of college students in the area, because this was what the ramen and Instant Lunch aisle looked like:

Same for the macaroni and cheese aisle:

And either everybody was planning a party, or there's a lot of those picky people who can't bear to drink water in our area, because this is what the soda section looked like.

It was nice not to have to care.

I went to work that day, and this was what they were expecting out of Laura now:

She had intensified significantly, and was now expected to be a category 4 hurricane when she made landfall. At work, they wanted us to do twelve hour shifts for the hurricane coverage, which meant I would be getting off work at about two in the morning, the exact time the hurricane was supposed to be hitting. I brought a mattress, a pillow, and a change of clothes, because, even though we were on the far edge of Laura's cone of destruction, I expected the conditions to be pretty unfavorable for a late night drive home.

It was still sunny early in the day, but by the time I was on my way to work, the clouds filled the sky. It started raining softly as I drove, but when I got to work, and just as I stepped out of my car, the rain's intensity quadrupled. I had to run for the awning, as did the several other people who were arriving at the same time as me. I went inside, and the rain only got worse. It was pouring buckets, raining cats and dogs, the old man was snoring. I was wondering just how I was going to get my mattress and pillow out of the car for the my night's sleep if it was going to be like this all day.

However, it wasn't. The rain let up an hour or so later, and as the day went on, things looked better and better. I finally went out to the car to grab my bedroll after the early shows ended, and this is what the sky looked like:

Not even a cloud. Was it going to be less than I thought? I still planned to stay the night at work, because I expected that conditions would change later, but I was starting to have my doubts.

We had a reporter in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where the storm was supposed to hit, and he had to hide out in the parking garage of one one of the casinos there, and do his live shots from inside that relative safety. Western Louisiana and the far eastern edge of Texas took it on the chin. Things were torn apart by the winds there, but here in Houston, we skated free.

When my shift finally ended at 2:00 AM, I considered heading upstairs to where I had stashed my mattress and going to bed, but the conditions outside looked just peachy. It would be a lot nicer to sleep in my own bed rather than a spare room in the station. I talked to the assignment desk manager, and he looked at the traffic camera along my route. There was nothing to worry about. I was convinced, I ran upstairs and grabbed my stuff, took it out to the car, and drove home.

I didn't deal with a single drop of rain the whole way. Laura had completely spared us. We had dodged a bullet...or a cannonball, really. The next day at work I saw what the coastal cities in Louisiana looked like, and I was very grateful to have been spared.