Tropical Sabbatical and Remembering the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane

Today is the day for a Tropical Sabbatical and a day off from worrying on the tropics. At least in Miami it is. And, I plan on doing just that... taking a day off.

As the high tries to get itself into the right configuration for the tropical waves rolling off of Africa.. unaware or very aware that the waters are too cool there still for real Cape Verde storms to form just yet.

Note frontal boundaries are still draped and arc their way across the East Coast like a casually thrown pair of pearls onto the table.

Moisture sits nestled in the Bay of Campeche as if it is June not late July.

Something is off here. Something is not quite ready yet.

Another view:
http://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_wv_east_loop-12.html

A dot midway across the Ocean has very limited potential to develop. Some models show a weakness later in the week, a doorway opening. I don't really think so but it's possible. It's July. It's early. Maybe.

Shabbos was wonderful here. My son Levi and his girlfriend were visiting. They came into town to get Sara's car and drive it back up north. We had a really nice time for dinner with some old friends who hung out talking about old times, new times and just time in general. My younger brother and his wife were here, it was nice. It was a nice shabbos. Rained a lot off and on. A crazy, wild electrical storm. Good old fashioned Tstorm. From the bottom looking up at the darkest of clouds it looked like we were out on the prairie somewhere and a Twister might be forming. Later in the afternoon, I lay in bed quietly, listening to the steady rain outside and smiling.

So nice.

This note here is for Jon (in case he reads it) "hi" :)
Seeing how he should be minding his myspace and not my blogs. You can sit on our sofa anytime with a newspaper over your head sleeping. We love you.

And, that...is that...is that..

Except to say that on a personal note I was wrong about something and I am glad to have been wrong. I may just give up making decisions as usually in retrospect they are wrong anyway.. I think I'll just play it my ear.

What is that song? Listening to the falling rain?

Going out today with my brother Ronnie and his wife and my nephew and my youngest son. Probably going to Naples, something about a city made of tin?? Water, boats, a harbor, a pier. Maybe Ronnie will change his mind (he has been known to) and we will go north or south. But, today.. is Ronnie's Day. It was his birthday on Friday and we are celebrating it.

For that matter... my ex-husband's birthday is today. Happy Birthday Eliezer.

And, then I go back to work on Monday. A nice job so far but mostly because the people I work with are extremely nice, good, caring people all working hard towards this common goal right now of getting this school up and running and ready for September. They are caring and just "good" nice people. And, from what I have seen from the girls I met who have applied (some I actually know personally a long time) they are special, good girls. It is very nice to be working in a positive environment where you are trying to build something that is much bigger than yourself, bigger than a weekly paycheck and watch an institution come to life in bits and pieces, spurts of energy and motion, behind the scenes drama and the every day tedious little chores of following through on small projects and chores that build the overall machine. It's exciting and rewarding so far even though I haven't been there that long. Very nice, good, protective, caring people who have even at this point taught me a lot about life and things I need to know to grow.

So... so far, so good. I hope I can continue to be an asset and help bring it all together.

Hoping a hurricane doesn't blow it all away.

What will the 2006 Hurricane Season bring?

Don't know for sure but know the nodes in Pisces are not a good sign. And, the ghost of the 1926 Hurricane Season sits hovering nearby as I walk over to the Starbucks on Lincoln Road and remember what the First Community Church looked like after the 26 storm from a series of pics I was privy to see a few years back when writing an article. The church stood but it was filled with water... the trees were ripped apart, the little Alamo like appearance was there but the survivors who gathered at the Spanish Village on Espanola Way were happy to be alive and just get water to drink. Not much changes when it comes to people fighting hurricanes and their aftermath in Miami. Great images available if you look for them of the Spanish Village right off Drexel and 15th from that time period. And, the look of those happy flappers taken the winter before and the looks of that same rag tag group in September stays with me forever. September Remember...

They were the people of Miami Beach, not the tourists, not the schemers but the every day people who worked and ran the stores on Washington Avenue that were open "all year" (a few were) and the ones on Alton or 5th Street. The ones who ran the bathing casinos, the real estate offices, the construction companies that were developing Miami Beach, lot by lot, house by house, home by home.

Those are the people who were personally remember forever the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926.

People like me and Chris Landsea and his best track team who review storms and my good friend, Paul George who study the history of that storm from all the angles and remember it only by bits and pieces of photos and data and flood surge charts and how the bay looked and Ralph Munroe's famous words and how he was right about how a storm surge would move up Biscayne Bay and even more so how the railroad being built to the south would damn up the water in Florida Bay and create a disaster seen a few years later in 1935.

History... you either learn from it.. or you are condemned to repeat it.

And, every day I go past the new towers going up and the city called "Midtown Miami" being built north of downtown and I realize, as the most wonderful Dr. Paul George realizes, that the last time we had a building frenzy like this was 1926. And, the frames of the skyscrapers lay twisted and broken like giant squashed spiders it was said after the Storm in the Miami Metropolis. Even though Miami took a beating, it rebuilt, it kept going, it kept growing.

Maybe this year the hurricanes will hit Tampa (a city way past due for a Cane) or Jacksonville (another way past due city) or Pensacola that keeps getting hit and keeps on going.

Somewhere, someone is going to get hit this year. I believe we are two for two if that really is a landfall on Nantucket.

But, Beven knows and we know... those who don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it and so here's to learning from history and hoping and praying we make it through the Hurricane Season of 2006 a bit safer than those poor folks on Miami Beach in 1926 who didn't even know what hit them and were unable to prepare for a Hurricane. For the ghosts of the people who were washed away as they rushed out across the Causeway to reach the safety of the mainland during the height of the eye of the storm unaware of what hurricanes look like from heaven or a satellite and got suddenly swept off the causeway and washed away when the second half of the eye wall carried them and their cute little Model T Fords out into Biscayne Bay and a watery grave ... they didn't even know a hurricane had an eye, or an eye wall or a storm surge.

We know. That much we have learned. Yet we keep on building towers at the water's edge so that people with money can sit in those towers and stare out on a good day at an afternoon thunderstorm and watch it dance it's way towards shore.

We learn a little, we learn a lot.
What was that old family saying, win a little, lose a lot?

Whatever... you get the idea.

Have a great Sunday in this tropical void of July.

Stock up, make plans, sit back and relax and watch the thunderstorms form out over the Everglades and move slowly over a city waiting to see what the Hurricane Season will bring.

July stand by, August Look out you must, September Remember.

http://weather.unisys.com/satellite/sat_wv_east_loop-12.html
Keep watching that water vapor loop :)

Enjoy the day, Bobbi