Houstonians are generally laid back about weather events. Perhaps it’s something to do with the inevitability of the humidity. No matter how many Summers you’ve spent here you know that first blast of 100% humidity in the Spring will knock you flat and that it won’t let up till mid to late November.
But some time in late August Houstonians get a queer expression on their faces. Nothing that you can pin down during conversations but a certain something. They begin to linger a little longer over the weather page in the paper. Stay up a little later for the 10 o’clock news to catch the weatherman. Their eyes focused on some spot in the Caribbean. Looking searchingly at a fuzzy satellite picture for the slightest sign of a hurricane.
Having weathered so many you’d think that you would become accustomed to it and in some sense I suppose this does happen. As I’m sure that southern Californians don’t even notice small tremors and that Midwesterners accept the coming of tornado season.
But even the most die-hard gulf coaster gets to look round at this time of year. Is that tree going to withstand a Cat 2 storm? Are the storm drains going to overflow and fill up my first floor? How old is that can of Spam in the cupboard? We nonchalantly prepare for it on the weekends. An extra couple gallon bottles of water, some cans of soup here and there. Maybe some late spring trimming of branches. Nothing to get excited about. Nobody admits to being nervous about hurricanes. Admitting that would be a gross breach of decorum.
They get ready as best they can for the big event without really trying. They leave the panic for when the weatherman officially gives them leave to panic. Then they take it in stride like any other American to panic.
It’s only in the waning days of September that they begin to relax slightly. The high hurricane season unofficially ends and they begin to relax a bit more and become a little more complacent. Life can return to normalcy for another ten months.
Houstonians will return to their normal pastimes and once more forget about the possible monsters of the Gulf.
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