The Night Before The Storm

Tonight, I was puttering around the yard trying to get "ready" for the storm, moving all those loose items that might blow around and break a window inside.

There was nothing unusual that I could sense to indicate that there was a storm offshore with tropical storm force winds fully 275 miles out from its center. The neighborhood was quiet. As is typical in Houston, the air was wet, warm and still. Actually, if you payed close attention to the dogs, they were sniffing the wind, the hair standing on their backs, and they'd occasionally bark at nothing.




I got to thinking, if I ignore what I know from the internet, Weather Underground, local news, radar, etc., thus must be something of what it was like on Galveston Island in September, 1900. Someone working on the Strand down near the docks might hear a mariner talking about there being a "hell of a storm" out there somewhere over the horizon. Or you might not. If you did, he might or might not have any real information concerning what type of storm it was, how big it was, which direction it was moving in, or what you could expect.

You'd just see the clouds come over the horizon, the tides would increase, the wind would rise until it reached 135 miles per hour, the rain would fall in torrents, and the ocean would inundate your little island, killing 8000 people in one day. Corpses floated in the streets and Galveston has never regained its commercial prominence after the natural disaster with the greatest loss of life in U.S. history.

And the night before, it would have been just like this. Sunny. Hot. Still.

But as I was finishing up the yardwork, the gate that had stood open in the still air all night creaked once, creaked again, then caught enough breeze to swing shut and latch.



There's been a change in the air.