It gets a bit scarier with each passing year, with more storms and they are more powerful storms! It appears 2018 is expected to be a very active Hurricane season and I really dread it. We'd never, ever evacuated a hurricane until "Irma" last September. Our property in Sebastian has many, many huge Oaks, Maples and Palm trees and when reports said that Irma was going to make a hit in our area as a high Category 3 or possibly Cat. 4, we decided to load up the dogs and luggage and we headed to the Fla. Panhandle where we'd made hotel reservations. After being on the road with thousands of others, in bumper to bumper traffic for more than twelve and a half hours, we made it to the hotel around 1:30 a.m. We checked in and got the dogs settled and we went to bed. My husband got up at about 5:30 a.m. that morning, took the dogs out for a walk, came back and turned the t.v. on and woke me up saying that he thought we might want to consider packing up and leaving because "Irma" had changed course again and was expected to hit the panhandle area of Florida! So I fed the dogs as he packed the truck and again we were on the road, this time heading NE towards South Carolina to my youngest sisters home in Greenville. After another extremely long drive of more than 12 hour, in horrendous traffic, rain and wind, we finally made it to her house where we stayed for a couple of days until the storm passed. I dreaded the awful traffic and long journey on the road that I knew we'd find on our return trip but we made it home and my hubby still says, never again, that we will just prepare for the worst, pray for the best and hunker down and ride it out.
The older I get the more I dread hurricane season. There are so many areas still rebuilding from last years storms ... it's really heartbreaking to see images (especially of Puerto Rico) where they are far, far from recovery and I pray those areas are spared from any major hurricanes this year!