With a little help from my friends: Charley & Irene

Having just gotten back from New Hampshire a few weeks ago, I seem to have narrowly escaped the vicious clutches of Miss Irene the Hurricane, the much anticipated terror of the East Coast. Somewhat guiltily – hurricanes can be so destructive after all - I found myself slightly thrilled at the prospects of a nice big storm. And I was definitely not the only one! People can become more than a little obsessed in the anticipation and planning process, checking news and progress on all kinds of websites, above and beyond the necessary precautions (- no need for names, you know who you are!)

Hurricane Charley, 2004
Luckily, my airplane safely left the ground at Logan Airport, before the hurricane came too close. But a few years back, I happened to cross paths with another ‘lovely’ little hurricane called Charley, while visiting the coast of Florida. It was considered to be kind of a bad one back in 2004, but Katrina has since put all the others out of the spotlight for a while. A little Wikipedia session confirmed that Charley had indeed been the second costliest hurricane in US history at the time (measured in estimated dollars worth of property damages - 18.6 billion in this case), but a few costly hurricanes in recent years have pushed little old Charley down to (a still significant) 6th place. 

Amusement park hopping in stormy  Orlando
During this aforementioned trip to Orlando, Florida, my travel companions and I would have to be labelled something along the lines of hurricane novices. We certainly didn’t let anything, let alone something as trivial as the weather, get in the way of our amusement park time. Our reasoning must have gone something like, why shouldn’t we go to Universal Studios in the morning if the storm isn’t due until six p.m? The only (potentially disastrous) flaw in this plan turned out to be getting back in the afternoon, impeded by heavy rain, foreboding tornado warnings and one major traffic jam. We were all a little tense while driving through a sheet of rain so solid, we literally couldn’t see the car in front of us, with lightning bolts worthy of any Hollywood film striking down between us.



It suffices to say I was relieved when we were back at our little rented bungalow. My friend and I, by this time fully prepared to take even the most drastic precautions, proceeded to hide our suitcases under the bed. Now, in case the roof blew off, our clothes might be spared, instead of being blown away Wizard of Oz style. Oh the priorities of a sixteen year old! (Needless to say the Florida-proof house and roof were fine, along with all our belongings). We then headed to the main building to wait out the storm with my friend’s parents. Besides the sound of the wind and a palm tree crashing in front of the window, we didn’t see anything too spectacular. Still, a lot of stuff to tell our friends back in the Netherlands – pretty cool.

2004, Punta Gorda, FL (taken from NY times article)
This was luckily/clearly not where we were!
Interestingly enough, this was the last Atlantic hurricane ever to be called Charley. The name was retired upon request, due to the massive damage and high death toll (10 direct deaths in the US, as well as many indirect ones). Apparently, there is a long list of retired hurricane names! Affected countries can request that the name of a particularly destructive storm be taken off the list by the World Meteorological Organization. Clearly there will never again be a hurricane Katrina – we have had the Katrina - but who knew there would never again be a hurricane Beulah, Fifi, Gustav or Hortense? It is still too early to tell whether the name Irene will now be retired, but this would apparently not be unthinkable. It’s definitely good to appreciate we don’t often have to deal with these kinds of extreme weather in the Netherlands, at least in recent years.       

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