On Monday morning, I got a text from him that said that I ought to prepare to possibly spend the night at work that night. I grumbled, but starting gathering the supplies that I had last used during the February freeze.
I piled it up in the living room as I grabbed it all, and Jupiter came out to investigate.
I took it all out to the car, and stuffed it in, then I headed to work a little early, just in case. It was mild weather at first, but then I got blasted by a heavy downpour for about twenty minutes, long enough for me to think Nicholas had come a little early. He wasn't supposed to hit until sometime between late this evening through tomorrow afternoon. It was just temporary though, and I finished out my drive on dry roads.
At work, I unloaded my car and stashed my stuff in the wellness room before anyone else could claim it. The wellness room is where breastfeeding mothers can go to pump while they're at work. It's one of very few rooms that has a lock on the door, so it's pretty nice if you can get it. I stayed in that room in February too.
I staked my claim, and headed down to begin covering the Tropical Storm.
The whole afternoon was pretty quiet. Not a lot was going on yet. We even recorded this beautiful sunset on our towercam as we waited for the storm to arrive.
Most of us were pretty surprised to see the sun poke its way through the clouds, but we sure didn't complain about it.
I called my wife to make sure she was coming home before the storm got bad and made driving treacherous, and she told me she was already home. They had shut down her work early to ensure everyone's safety, so she was home having a lovely evening with the kids. not only that, but they'd shut down school as well as her work for the next day, so they would be home for a while.
As the night wore on, it was starting to look like Tropical Storm Nicholas was going to be a dud. The eye was drifting a little out to sea, and the weatherman was lowering the forecasted rain levels. It appeared as though we were getting a reprieve, and Nicholas would skip around us.
If you know about hurricanes, however, you should know that this development could also be a bad thing. Over land, storms weaken, but over water, especially warm gulf water, storms strengthen. That's what happened here.
We went into our ten o'clock news show thinking that it would be a normal half-hour long production. But just before we went to air, Nicholas crossed the threshold in ferocity from tropical storm to hurricane.
Our news coverage immediately expanded. We had reporters strategically placed around the area, including a couple of our favorite places to visit, Surfside Beach and Galveston Island. Surfside is further west, so it got hit first. The rain was blowing in sideways. Our reporter out there was getting tossed around like a rag doll. Then the monsoon shorted his mic out, and he had to give up and hide in the truck, reporting from inside the cab with a backup mic.
Hurricane Nicholas then moved up the coast to Galveston, where it made life dangerous for our other seaside reporter.
They extended the newscast to 11:00 PM, then took it online and we continued with a webcast for an hour and a half. Then, when all the late programming ended, we went back on air and broadcast live. I was stuck in the seat in the feedroom until the morning show editors arrived at 1:00 AM, and when they finally arrived, we were still going strong. We stayed on air until 2:00 AM, gave everybody a little break, then went back on at 4:00 AM, and stayed on until 1:00 PM, I believe.
Luckily for me, however, my shift came to an end at 1:00 AM, and I could turn things over to someone else for the rest of the coverage. I went up to my digs in the wellness room, spread out my blanket, and started snoring away. As I was drifting off, I think I could hear rain on the roof overhead, but I couldn't be sure. It just as easily could have been the air conditioner running.
Meanwhile, my wife had little to worry about. She didn't sleep well, but it was more because of worry for what was going on with her work than it was from worry about the storm. The power did go out for about a half-hour at 5:00 AM, but that's the worst our part of Houston fared. The hardest thing about the storm for her was dealing with all the logistics created by shutting things down for the storm. She was home all day, but was also working all day.
Once again, I think we were really lucky when picking our home. There's been a lot of natural disasters since we arrived, and somehow we've skated through all of them unscathed. I can't help but be very thankful for that.
Other places in Houston didn't do as well. When I woke up in the morning, we had pictures like these to share with our viewers.
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