Why I Made This Harbor and other thoughts to think upon..

People who study hurricanes go a little crazy during the off season waiting for the hurricane season to start. Then, they go a little crazy during the early days of the season waiting for the REAL Hurricane Season to start. The weather gets hot and then it gets hotter. It gets muggy and humid and hurricane people in South Florida begin to talk statistically about how dry May is as they watch the sky waiting for thunderclouds to build out over the Everglades. During years like this.. May becomes June and they are still waiting, still still watching the sky to see if those signs of the rainy season will climb high and higher and form into large thunderstorms that rain down upon the land and announce the Rainy Season has begun.

Hurricane specialists go on the TV and talk about how dry May has been and how that has extended into June. And, they talk of signs and statistics and explanations about how the big ones always come when the rainy season is late. And, locals know that old timers always said a dry may brought a hurricane later in the season. But we know that every season is different and it only takes one.

And....all of us who love hurricanes for all the various reasons, who track and study and watch and stare, whether we get paid to watch the weather or not... get a little crazy.

Okay, we get A LOT crazy. How can we not? We have a hobby that has less peak days than some sports have playoff days. During some years the whole season can be summed up in two or three storms and in other years there are two or three hurricanes spinning throughout the basin.

We stay up until 2am just to hear the new cords.. to watch one more image come in... speak to one more friend online.

And, while waiting to go nuts like that... everyone begins to bite and snap and eachother over the smallest complaint on message boards all over the net. More arguing can be heard over whether a messy mass of moisture in the Gulf will or won't turn into the storms first hurricane.

People make bets.. even non-betters place their bets. Like people discussing an earthquake in LA the moment after the ground has shook a little.. made little circles in their coffee and trembled the ground under their feet... "I think that was a 3.0 in Santa Monica" "Nah, had to be 4.2 out in Palm Springs." "No way, was a 3.8 out by the Channel Islands" We are slightly related those of us who study hurricanes and earthquakes, distant cousins with the same blood running in our veins. We love the earth, we love to watch it boil into wild storms and we love watch it quiver and re-arrange itself, growing pains. We love to stare at it on a sat link.. water vapor.. visible, zoom in close or from a beautiful wild wide shot from high up above. We all have our favorites. Mine is the water vapor.. everyone who knows me knows that..and there are a lot of people who know me.

So.. while eveyone argues, bites their nails, goes blurry staring at tropical waves off Africa that won't quite form.. while everyone argues their way across the boards or fights with clerks at their local Publix about WHY they don't have their hurricane charts in and people have fever waiting for the season to really start..

I made myself and anyone who wants a Harbor.. a safe refuge to enjoy myself a bit... to laugh again, to smile.. to think .. to write.. to post a bit my thoughts on hurricanes and the 2004 Hurricane Season.

According to the dictionay... a harbor is a safe refuge. We all need safe refuges in life.. this is mine.. welcome to it.

Harbor: a place of security and comfort : REFUGE
Enjoy, feel safe.. and smile.. rest your bleary eyes. Shhh... the season hasn't really started yet.