Earl Fizzled

Big old scary Hurricane Earl fizzled. All this past week we heard about how it was a category 4 storm, how it was racing up the East Coast, how it could possibly slam into Cape Cod and then into Maine and how we need to prepare. It was the talk with people from church, it was the talk with people at work and it was on my mind throughout the course of the week.

As far as work was concerned, we wanted to make sure that all the things that aren’t nailed down were safely inside (plants in planters, the large sprinkler and the picnic table). We also had to make sure that the generator was working and had fuel in it so if the power went out, we could get it fired up to keep the freezers and cold room running.

When it came to church, the main decision, as far as I was concerned, was whether or not to have the bean supper today. I kept a close eye on the track of the storm, watched every weather report on it and made plans to talk to my pastor about it on Friday morning. On Friday, I called him and we discussed whether or not to cancel the supper. We finally agreed to go ahead with plans to hold the supper, have people make the pies and breads, buy the groceries we needed and soak the beans. If the storm ended up hitting us and we had no power and/or it wasn’t feasible to travel to church to prepare the supper, we would cancel it at that time. Yes, we would waste a lot of food but we were willing to waste it in order to see if we could hold the supper if Earl fizzled.

And Earl fizzled. Actually, fizzled isn’t accurate. It went about 100 miles farther to the east than what they thought. When they show the range of where the storm might track, there was a chance it would hit us head on, or go out to sea but we would still experience tropical force wind and rain or go 100 miles farther out and we would just get some rain. The last scenario is what took place. It went so far out to sea that we just had some rain and no wind.

I kept waking up last night checking on the status of the storm. It did rain pretty hard for a while but I have seen worse. And there wasn’t any wind. All in all, not a bad storm.

It was a little nerve wracking for me to try to decide to hold the bean supper or cancel it. I didn’t want to cancel it and then have the storm miss us (which essentially it did) but I also didn’t want to hold it and have the storm hit us head on and we lose power and people have to drive through terrible weather to get to the church, etc. After all, it is just a bean supper and not worth risking people’s lives over.

My understanding is that there are more storms on their way. Some already looking pretty bad and have names and others are just coming off the coast of Africa. We are still right smack dab in the middle of hurricane season and we haven’t had a major hurricane in the New England since Hurricane Bob in 1991. We are over due for a storm. Maybe the rest will fizzle out as well but the odds are not in our favor. Oh well. Take each storm as they come. Can’t do anything else…except move someplace where there aren’t hurricanes. But every place has their bad weather problems so it is better to deal with what we know rather than learning how to deal with what we don’t know. In other words, the devil we know is better than the devil we don’t. Frankly, I like the low odds of dealing with a devil like a hurricane in order to live someplace that is beautiful, scenic and such a wonderful place to be that it is called “Vacationland”. Well worth the inconvenience of hurricane watches and warnings. Wouldn’t want to be anywhere else!