>Hurricane Earl Obsession

>I have been absolutely obsessed with weather lately. I’ve always loved watching the weather channel especially during hurricane season or winter, but this year I got especially involved. It all started when my kids and I began talking about how hurricanes form. I explained that typically the major ones that impact us form from a Cape Verde Wave. Of course this led to the question “how does a wave turn into a tropical depression”. I needed help answering this question so I turned to my trusty Google search bar. Well, after explaining everything to the kids and satisfying their curiosity I realized now I had more questions. So I started looking more. This morphed from looking at articles about hurricanes in general to the current weather season. This then turned into analyzing the maps, radars and satellite images from The National Hurricane Center. So, of course, I decided to pick a depression currently in the Atlantic basin to follow. Big mistake. I happened to choose Earl, who at the time was not expected to become much of anything. I gradually began checking the stats of the storm more and more frequently. By the time it became a Cat 3 I had downloaded all the imagery and had even gone so far as to make a little amateur projected path so I could compare it to real meteorology forecasts.

I was obsessed.

I set an alarm every 3 hours each night so I could download the latest stats and plot them on my own map in the morning. I was a lunatic. The fact that it turned into such a big storm threatening New England made it worse. THEN when I realized our second home was in it’s direct path I went bonkers. Started making plans to leave the kids with my mother in law while I went down to assess damage, etc. Thankfully, it did little to no damage to either of our houses, but holy COW what a ride. If I had just gone by what the forecasts were saying maybe I wouldn’t have been so scared, but noooooo, I had to analyze every image, every radar, everything; that put me in Worst Case Scenario Mode. Not good.

Each time my husband called during this adventure he’d ask “so how’s your boyfriend, Earl”? Apparently I talked about him a lot. My husband is a very laid back jokester who was not in the least bit worried about this storm. I need to learn to listen to him more, but that is for another conversation.

So, even though hurricane season is not over and the waves forming in the Atlantic are occurring quite frequently, I am refusing to track anything myself. Thankfully this obsession began and ended during semester break. Can you imagine if I had been mid-semester? Oh boy, wouldn’t have been good