ISAAC'S STORM + A TRIP DOWN MEMORY LANE

There's only a 60% chance of rain today, but looking at the sky above my money is on it raining.  I have become an avid weather watcher since our re-location, something you have no need for in Los Angeles. I am constantly looking at multiple weather reports, which surprisingly all seem to have disparate information for the same place, one even read, 'possibly a couple of thunderstorms', that seemed more town talk than meteorology, but what do I know?   I have no idea how weather works, but I have been reading about someone that did--meteorologist Issac Cline. It's an Erik Larsen book, an author that can make even the most mundane historical event thrilling, just think of the prose he is capable of when he is covering something as awe inspiring as the greatest natural disaster in this nation's history-The Great Galveston Storm of 1900.  Just the first couple of chapters have you gripping your bed sheets in terror. The first couple of chapters are as far as I have gotten in the book thus far, but I am a Larsen fan and think this book will be both thorough and thought provoking. My husband told me to write about anything else besides a darn storm and I would have if I could have gotten the sky out of my mind, but I couldn't so am writing about another storm that may or may not be coming and a storm that happened over a century ago; riveting, I know.  You know what else is riveting?  I was witness to (at the time), the worse hurricane ever to hit the Atlantic basin, a category 5 hurricane which is the most intense you can get.  Winds were measured at over 185 mph, I watched cars fly by, cars!  It didn't scare me as much as it probably should have, I think it was youth and that feeling of being impervious to danger.   The memory that is most vivid in my mind is that after the storm the sky opened up to the brightest blue and there was a giant rainbow across the island (everything in the Caribbean is bigger, seriously, even their rainbows). Have you ever been stuck in a natural disaster? Did it change you? Make you more brave? I always wonder about close calls and how they change a person, some people never recover and some it's like a shot of ambition steroids, they set off to conquer the world. Obviously, since you know I procrastinate, I don't know if I changed much, I stopped saying 'like', before every sentence, and stopped slouching, but I don't know if I was too young to appreciate the golden opportunity which was laid in front of me. I think I need to ruminate on this a little more on this Monday morn, hmmm, maybe not, since I do need to get to a huge list of things to-do. Maybe tomorrow...