A writer and a tropical muse. A funky Lubavitcher who enjoys watching the weather, hurricanes, listening to music while enjoying life with a sense of humor and trying to make sense of it all!
Friday, March 02, 2018
Winter Storm More Like a Winter Hurricane. A WIND Event on Par with a Strong Tropical Storm. Trees Down, Power Outages and Travel Misery and Confusion. Update on Parkland and Life in Florida. I'm in the Miami Area for Purim
Weather on the rampage in many parts of the country today. What some don't understand is that this is much more of a wind event in some places than a blizzard with a foot of snow. When people don't see snow in the winter they think it's not really a huge weather event. Wrong...when snow is a no show in the winter time but winds are sustained at 69 MPH you are dealing with wind as strong as a Tropical Storm about to go Hurricane. Oh and there are wind chills involved obviously beyond trees falling on your homes, cars and businesses. Sustained winds in the 50 and 60 MPH range from the Carolinas to Maine creates havoc in your front yard when the huge maple tree topples over onto your car or your flights are cancelled. And even if you are in Miami far from Washington DC your plane has most likely not arrived as it's stuck somewhere else and it's not landing today in the middle of this current winter storm. It's all about the wind...........
These are wind speeds NOT temperatures!
Again read the small print from the NWS
It basically says "shelter in place"
Look at the warning from the NWS in the DC area. You can go online and check out your favorite city and see how bad it is there specifically. Different cities have different concerns. My Raleigh Weather Apps keep sending me warnings for possible power outages far from the main impact of this storm further to the North.
Look at the wind sites online.
Many places are dealing with different weather.
Many weather warnings are up...
Yes, the wind is very whooshy and dangerous out there with or without snow flakes falling.
As for me I'm in Sunny South Florida with my family down here enjoying some various Meyer Family Milestones and hanging out with my best friend Malka for Purim where we dressed up and partied last night at her daughter and son-in-law's Chabad of Miami Lakes also servicing St. Thomas University. Making happy memories in the Miami area.
Below is me and Malka dressed up in costume.
Appreciating the happy moments in life.
With much going on in the world it's important to enjoy the happy times with those you love. Give charity, do good deeds and be grateful and aware of the good things in your life! Hug them tighter, tell them you love them and do acts of kindness together!
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter
Ps It's always good to give Charity and am asking anyone reading this to think on giving money to this worthwhile cause. Around the rest of the country the Parkland Story may have faded into the past but here in South Florida where many students injured are recovering, many are still traumatized as they go back to school and there are groups here working on the ground to make a difference daily. Chabad in Parkland has been one of those groups.
My oldest son who lives near there is celebrating a birthday and asking people to donate towards those trying to help those at Chabad of Parkland. It takes a village to heal a community sometimes.
https://www.facebook.com/donate/1573026836086396/10155176492486366/ Everyone knows that 17 people died but I'd bet most reading this do not know how many people were injured physically and are dealing with the trauma emotionally. When you give charity towards a cause where people are on the ground, one on one helping others you are part of that process of healing.
Weather, Politics Both Locational .... Some South Florida History - Back From Florida in NC Thinking on Friends I have in Parkland. #AlyssaAlhadeff Columbine Almost 20 Years Ago. Much Needs to be DONE.
Hard to believe it's been a week since I posted here. This is "off season" in the tropics and when I usually am quiet. I've been traveling and that traveling is going to continue for the rest of the month. I jokingly said I should just rent an apartment down in South Florida for this period but no we are going back and forth so I'm sort of in a mental Jet Lag even though I'm not switching time zones. Speaking of switching time zones I wish.... I want so badly to go to Seattle and visit with the family there however my priorities currently are in Florida even if part of my heart is in Seattle. It's late February but it feels like late March and if that continues the tropics may wake up early this year. Just something to think on so putting it out there....
So back to weather. Much in life is locational whether we want to look at things that way or not. My spell checker doesn't like the word but it's a popular word in International Relations and as that is one of my degrees I'm going with it. Politics is locational in that issues are felt stronger in some areas than in other areas. Places where people hunt for example view gun rights differently than they do in a quiet suburb filled with strip centers that feature sushi restaurants and frozen yogurt shops. The name Parkland brings up a multitude of places where young men decided to take their anger out on a general population of students that often had no idea who the shooter was or why they hated them so much they needed to be hunted down and shot. In Columbine many of the students knew the killers; in Sandy Hook many of the small children had no idea who was shooting at them as if they were in a movie their parents or older siblings might be watching. In Parkland everyone automatically knew who was doing the shooting and surprisingly they were not surprised as many had known the deranged killer since they were in grade school with him. If you live in Oregon or Indiana "Parkland" is now part of the lexicon that opens the discussion on Gun Control and brings up the forever question of "just why" and "when will this stop?" In South Florida "Parkland" is where your sister-in-law lives or your cousin's kids went to that incredibly good school or where your best friend's wife taught and hid in a classroom with your friend's children.
South Florida is an interrelated area that blends together in a megapolis of small neighborhoods that culturally are one. From Kendall to Coral Springs to Boca to Miami Beach it's one general area geographically. Look at the map above and you will see what I mean. They were cities built on the Atlantic Coastal Ridge immediately to the East of the Everglades. Some people love living closer to the Everglades in beautiful homes that though expensive are much more affordable than living in Coral Gables or Miami Beach. Suburban sprawl looks prettier out there in carefully designed places such as Parkland and Weston where there is the illusion of being separated from the sometimes grittier world of Miami. But again everyone eats the same foods, hangs out in the same places and roots for the Miami Dolphins to have just one good winning season. Kids in Parkland root for the Miami Heat and kids growing up in Hollywood Florida get on the expressway and race up to their cousins in Coral Springs to hang out on a Saturday Night. Only people flying overseas or tourists who don't know better fly into MIA if they live in Miami Beach, North Miami Beach, Aventura or Walnut Creek...they live in the Northern part of South Florida just as kids down in Kendall and Coral Gables do fly out of MIA unless they want to fly JetBlue or Southwest in which case they drive up to FLL in the Hollywood area.
South Florida is one general region in the same way people who live in Tampa are aligned with people who live in Sarasota. And, south of the Lake the weather is different than it is up past the Lake as it is a Tropical Savanna Climate Zone prone to tropical weather more than winter weather. Rarely do snowflakes get anywhere near South Florida. Rarely does this sort of school violence get anywhere near South Florida. To be honest Miami has many problems with gangs in inner city areas or not such inner city areas. To be honest Miami has gang problems and some neighborhoods worry on drive by shootings and because of that people when they can afford it move North and West often to the suburbs such as Walnut Creek, Weston and Coral Springs aka Parkland as those neighborhoods basically blend together hovering just up near the Broward County Palm Beach Line.
Small trivia on Broward is it is named after a Florida Governor Napolean Bonaparte Broward who yes you can check out his Family Tree on Geni but the real trivia is he ran for office on the promise to "drain the swamps" literally. You see back at the turn of the century in the 1900s people thought the idea of draining the Everglades was a really good thing providing more farm land and a wider Atlantic Ridge to build homes on and create new cities. Previously in Miami everything West of 27th Avenue was basically swamps, however after dredging canals and using dynamite they blew up the Miami River Rapids and the water table lowered over land once under water and well it was a different time and place. The Everglades that Marjory Stoneman Douglas loved so much were seen as a menace by many that needed draining vs saving as an ecological safe, serene, natural place to protect. Another wonderful character who lived down in South Florida was Ralph Middleton Munroe who lived in Coconut Grove, built sailboats that he sailed up and down Biscayne Bay and spoke out to save the environment. I've quoted him in my blog often on Hurricane History.
The latter two wrote books you should buy, borrow or read online they offer an awesome, unique view into South Florida life when people first moved down and loved the beauty of nature and spoke out to preserve it. I'm pretty sure neither would see the beauty in suburbs such as Weston or Parkland however they would enjoy the beautiful sunsets and the closeness to nature. Times change, what seems good in 1910 doesn't seem good or smart in 2010 but it's where we are at in 2018. If you are a developer with a vision then Weston is beautiful and peaceful yet if you are a conservationist you feel sad that the Everglades are eroding from both sides as both Miami and Naples dig deeper into the Everglades every year that goes by with new subdivisions touting living at the edge of the Everglades. Florida's map looked very different when the 3 people above lived and loved life in Florida.
I have a cousin who loves living out near the Everglades in a small place that backs up to a canal where he smokes a cigar if the weather is nice on his patio and stares out at the sun setting into a more pristine world than the one he lived in when he lived in North Miami Beach. Both he and his wife have friends who live in Parkland due North of where they live. Their Stepgrandson (is that a term?) went to Parkland yesterday with other classmates to protest and join in unity. I watched him on Facebook Live. He's a kid, a good kid and he wants to make the world a better place. We all do yet we all end up arguing over the details involved. Gun Control vs Mental Illness vs the System Letting Down OUR Children ..... so many places to start and so many things we need to fix. We need to build high schools that have the population of small towns where our children live most of their day as safely as we build other large government buildings. Dry wall doesn't stop bullets for example and most of West Broward is built with Dry Wall. I know that a few years ago when I lived in South Florida full time there was a school set up in both Miami Dade and Palm Beach for children with special needs and that special need being anger. Broward County did NOT have that school in their school system. To be honest, Broward County School System is often the ugly step sister to Miami Dade and Palm Beach school systems. When I taught for Miami Dade County Schools in North Miami Beach most of the teachers drove down from Broward County where they lived as Dade County paid significantly more money than Broward County paid it's teachers and they had better benefits.
Weather is locational and in my location today the sun is not out but it's going to be in the upper 70s. It feels like summer, it looks like winter.
Marco Rubio got slammed by students for not responding the way they wanted last night, but he had the guts and compassion to attend the CNN event and try to listen to the students. Parents who lost children in the Parkland Shooting spoke about their loss; I have friends who are close friends with the parents who lost children... some knew the children who were slaughtered. It's emotional and real in South Florida and the nation watches between a lack luster Olympics and reruns being shown by other stations that didn't want to go up against the Olympics. It's today's new story. Will it be eclipsed by war with North Korea or another school shooting or a large Earthquake or Tornado in the heartland? Stories in the media only have legs until another story comes along that eclipses it. Today being National Margarita Day pushed Parkland off the Twitter Feed in popular hashtags.
In North Carolina the death of the Rev. Billy Graham is the lead story on all local news channels and the details of his life and the expected funeral are being talked on during most of the time allotted for the news. He was a North Carolina Son.... North Carolina loved him greatly in a different way than people in Oregon or Idaho even though he was loved everywhere. He may have taken his calling across the world to distant arenas to spread the word of God yet he came from and lived in and will be buried in North Carolina. He spoke of God and Love and his message was not one of hate or anger. And, Ill add something unpopular in some circles but we did take God out of public schools and I think on some level that was wrong. A moment of silence in school didn't kill anyone, however it was replaced by moments of silence while students hid in closets waiting and praying the school shooter would not enter their classroom and kill them. There was a lot of prayer in school the day that the shooter killed 17 people and made the name Parkland synonymous with death and destruction not a park like paradise on the edge of the Everglades to raise your family in a safe, secure place. That's sad. That's very sad.
Something to think on while parts of the country are having ice threats and other parts are facing flooding . We are moving fast from Winter to Spring and the Hurricane Season is less than 100 days away. Hopefully the Parkland story will have long legs and somehow, somewhere, someone will get something done so that the system will not fail our children and their teachers, guns will have more checks made safer by a system that records mental illness and numerous police visits for violence and a way to fight the mental illness that we have not yet been able to achieve. It's easy when a child is 10 to give them drugs but what happens when they are 17 and stop taking the drugs or tell their parents they are and flush them down the toilet? It happens... trust me. And, why.... why are our young children, especially young men, so prone to violence and personality disorders in 2018? A lot of questions.
Excuse the typos.... this post is for my own need to write, a few friends who know who they are and anyone who surfs in on the Internet. Much love.... many prayers and let's communicate with compassion not diatribes about political parties we are one human race and our children go to school together and face the same fears no matter what our political persuasion is in 2018. And, I'll add many of these young soon to be voters are not affiliated as the democratic leaning ones liked Sanders and didn't like the dirty party tricks used to ensure Hilary be the candidate. And, many of the ones that leaned right did not like Donald Trump and preferred other republican candidates. This may be the largest group of young soon to be voters who have no real love for either of the dominate political parties and that is not locational it's an issue from Florida to California to Washington State to Washington DC. Soon this will be their world. I hope and pray they make it better.
Besos BobbiStorm
@bobbistorm on Twitter
Ps... A disclaimer here in that I am not affiliated with either party. Some issues I lean right and other issues I lean left. I vote for the best candidate for the office not a political party. I do not own guns and do not want to and do believe weapons of mass destruction should not be in the streets yet I also believe in the right to own a gun. I don't understand how there are rules and age limits on drinking beer, buying energy drinks (really), condoms, cigarettes, cigarette lighters and yet no age limits on the ability to buy these types of weapons that are the weapon of choice in most school shootings. Mind Boggling.
April 20, 1999 was the Columbine Shooting... why are we still trying to figure out how to fix this problem? Trust me the mother of #AlyssaAlhadeff will not give up, neither were her friends and neither will the students who were studying the Holocaust that day they lost their History Teacher. I have a lot of friends who were friends with Alyssa. It's personal for me not just a news story waiting to fade away.
Trying to Make Sense of It All. Parkland Florida, Coral Springs... Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School. How did we get here? How do we fix it?
Parkland Florida.
A beautiful place to live until yesterday.
My thoughts. Aside from the horror that so many young lives were taken from us yesterday ... it really bothers me that the shooter who took their lives escaped into the crowd. Thankful that he was picked up by the Coconut Creek officer who went looking for him down back roads looking for the suspect.
He "looked like a typical high school student" so much so that it would have been easy to keep driving looking for someone who looked "evil" vs "a typical high school student" walking along a road near a high school. The school named after one of Florida's most iconic environmentalist Marjorie Stoneman Douglas became the scene for horrific bloodshed, terror and death; add in panic and an attempt by the staff to try and follow protocol without knowing what was really happening. Schools today are trained in how to handle an active shooter situation but few are tested in the way they were yesterday when someone who looked liked "typical high school student" became the face of pure evil. As people from the school identified him and passed messages around on social media the press tried to keep up with the ever flowing river of information found on his many social media sites. If it was that easy for students from the school to find his YouTube and his Instagram sites it should have easier to stop this from happening. His classmates were not surprised it was him, he was ex-student most likely to do something like this and they verbalized that on social media all day yesterday while trying to make sense of it all. Perhaps we need to start taking social media more seriously? Buzzfeed did a better job finding out information on him than Fox, CNN or MSNBC.
The FBI and media is still trying to catch up and learn what his fellow students knew. Yes, his name look the same and yes it looks like him but .... They were asked today at a Press Conference ... it was painful to watch them act as if there was another person with his name and his face posting violent images online while making public threats on Youtube to become a high school shooter. We are all so politically correct these days. We worry on our personal liberties getting lost yet the freedom to send our children to school and protect them at those schools from a student who decides to go down in violent glory as a "high school shooter" seems to get lost in the shuffle. I don't know what the answer is but as a parent it's kind of ironic that my kids were safer at North Miami Beach Sr. High a school considered ghetto and dangerous vs one of the best high schools in South Florida in the safe, idyllic world othat Parkland Florida was before yesterday. I have several friends who live there, pray at Chabad there and send their children to school there. It's a nice place to live. It's a huge school more like a college campus than your typical "high school" and yet something went terribly wrong yesterday. There is a place you hear about on the News where a shooting occurred to random people in a far away place. Yesterday was not so random for me nor for others who have never been to South Florida.
The world is very small and we are instantly connected often to news events both good and bad, though the sad ones travel faster through our WhatsApp feeds than the good ones. It was pretty obviously last night around 9 PM when the prayers for the 2 girls who were missing Meadow Pollack and Alyssa Alhadeff and had not been seen or found in the hospital could only be two of the five students who remained at the crime scene not yet identified. I prayed but I was afraid the morning would bring sad news and it did indeed.
I'm Jewish and I'm involved with the Chabad movement so I knew that their local Rabbis were trying to comfort their families and tried to get them information at the same time. Heartbreaking videos by Alyssa's grandmother were passed around my kid's WhatsApp sites and it's very personal for me. I have family members who knew families who went to that high school and I have family members who teach in schools in South Florida. My daughter in law works with special need students who were afraid to be in class this morning; totally panicked that they were safe and no gunmen would get in to the school. She's about 8 and a half months pregnant, she took them to the office and had the staff show them all the cameras that watch all the entrances and exits to assure them they are safe. She works at a rather large Jewish Private School that takes security extremely serious. My son who lives in Broward County just south of Parkland kept the news radio off while driving the kids to school today. He didn't want to have to explain to my 11 year old granddaughter or the 6 year old grandson what was going on as his phone rang nonstop with text, Instagram and WhatsApp messages as friends passed information back and forth praying, hoping for good news for Meadow or Alyssa. Several students showed up at prayer services by Chabad this morning to offer up the prayer that is made to give thanks for avoiding death or a dangerous situation. Many people are giving thanks in many different prayers today in a community known for a safe, tranquil place to bring up your children and live. Safety is sadly often an illusion.
How does a girl with the beautiful, peaceful name like Meadow die in a grizzly school shooting when she should be thinking on graduation and college? It's mind boggling. We worry on hurricanes and natural disasters yet our system allows people who have been thrown out of a Public school to avoid further surveillance in the name of privacy and freedom and liberty. He was thrown out partially for continually bringing weapons on campus and making threats; perhaps law enforcement should have become involved? He wrote posts on the web that he was going to become a school shooter, he posted graphic pictures of animals he killed and commented on other sites with his name that he was going to kill students in school. Someone notified the FBI and were questioned how they knew him when they told him they didn't know him but they saw it on YouTube in the comments.
Among the dead were two teachers who were killed.
Aaron Feis protected his students.
He put them first.
He died.
His students thanked him with tears in their eyes on interviews. He shut the door so the girls could hide yet he stayed in the hallway to help others it seems and he was shot. It's a small world there; a large school but a very small world. He was Facebook friends with the media face of this tragedy BSO Sheriff Scott Israel on Facebook. Everyone I know in South Florida is shaken. The clerk in Rite Aid in Raleigh today wished me a good day and added with a sad, far away look in her eyes and said "I just hope and pray we don't have to hear about any more school shootings today."
I don't want to hear about "gun control" as if that would be the magic bullet to end school shootings. I'm not a gun lover. When my kids were growing up we had a "no gun" rule in the house and I mean toy guns or games with guns; water pistols were allowed until we took them away when the kids got too wild. As a child my cousin and I grew up playing Cowboys and Indians and pretended to be Napolean Solo and April Dancer (Google Man from U.N.C.L.E) and there were no school shootings. What changed? How did we get here? Shoot outs were seen in spy movies or Gangster movies from the 1920s and we weren't allowed to see them until we were 17 or with a parent. Spoiler alert my parents didn't take me to R rated movies.
Before blaming "guns" for the violence as a mother and grandmother I'd blame Hollywood. I know it's not a popular cause for liberals to blame Hollywood vs guns for school shootings but the one thing that has changed since Columbine is the quality of video games kids today play that are on par with virtual video games the military uses to put the shooter into the action and perfect his skill. Movies are more violent, TV is more violent and various shows on Netflix and HBO that are the most popular are the most violent. All it takes is one alienated kid with any one of many mental health disorders to get lost in a maze of online violence and social media groups that feed on young alienated bitter kids. There is something about teenage boys and being bitter, depressed and alienated that brings out the need to "go out in a blaze of glory" vs a bitter, vengeful girl who does online bullying or writes nasty "anonymous" notes in group chats.
I don't know what the answer is but I know there are answers out there. I know we need to find those answers. I know we cannot settle for "just the way it is these days" because it's not supposed to be this way. And for those of you are want to scream gun control you might want to check into his school record "incidents' since Middle School when he not only brought large knives into his school in his lunch boxes. And, yeah a knife would not have killed as many people as he was able to with guns but if he had no guns he would have sliced and diced those young girls to death had he wanted. And, it seems he wanted to.... and he was quite verbal about it online before yesterday's killing.
He took the lives of young girls studying dance and preparing to go off to college next year. This has to stop. We can prepare for hurricanes and evacuate from a Major Hurricane (and get sued by Arkansas State University for not showing up for a football game...see previous article) but we cannot prevent our children from going to school and not be in danger from some copy cat shooter who wants to go down in history by shooting up the most people in a high school.
These children are gone today.
Some 14 year old Freshman.
Some 17 year old Seniors.
Some teachers at the school.
Her grandmother prayed all night she'd be found alive.
She died in a pool of blood.
We can make a difference by not ignoring the obvious and erring on the side of safety even if it means putting someone under close inspection and supervision to try to help them and others they may harm. A grandmother in Everett Washington turned her grandson after finding his journals and a rifle hidden in his guitar case.
Location: Miami, Raleigh, Crown Heights, Florida, United States
Weather Historian. Studied meteorology and geography at FIU. Been quoted in Wall Street Journal, Washington Post & everywhere else... Lecturer, stormchaser, writer, dancer. If it's tropical it's topical ... covering the weather & musing on life. Follow me on Twitter @ https://twitter.com/#!/BobbiStorm
