The calm before the storm gets the best PR. As far as I know, the calm after the storm is plenty nice, too. But as we wait here in Florida for Milton’s deadly arrival, there’s an eerie sense of normalcy: it’s the End of the World, but whatcha gonna do? Pass the nachos.
A short while ago, we escaped Tampa Bay and made safe passage to Orlando, riding most of the trip on the shoulder of the road.
Escaping on the shoulder of the road from Tampa Bay. Stay safe, everyone! #HurricaneMilton pic.twitter.com/GJqCz2hyQd
— Scott Pinsker (@ScottPinsker) October 8, 2024
Our intrepid governor, the smart and talented Ron DeSantis (who definitely does not eat pudding with his fingers), opened up the shoulders of the highways to ease the traffic. It was a risky gamble: all it would take was one knucklehead to crash his car while texting (or fiddling with his vape pen), and first responders would have no way to clear the traffic. Potentially, the traffic jam could’ve stretched from Orlando to Tampa’s beaches.
But you know what? Nobody crashed. Everyone was in a hurry, but nobody was driving like a madman. When trucks needed to get by, we let ‘em by. When cops were on the side with their lights on, we just ignored ‘em and kept on driving. We helped each other.
And it worked: we rode the shoulder and came pretty, pretty close [Larrry David voice] to our normal travel time to Orlando.
Yes, Orlando. We’re still in the pathway of Hurricane Milton, but it should be weakened a bit before it smacks us around. The Pinsker family (me, my wife, two boys, and two cats) are holed up in an Orlando hotel right now. Cats are miffed about being evicted from Tampa Bay, but everyone’s behaving fairly well and/or using the appropriate litter box.
Orlando wasn’t my first choice, but there just weren’t a lot of great options. The local hotels were canceling reservations, and via social media, we heard that hotel rooms were all gobbled up from Tampa through Georgia, and even up to Ohio.
Three million people live in Tampa Bay. That’s a lot of hotel beds.
So we took what we could get. Our hotel has a generator, the room is comfy, and I think we’ll be fine.
The big question, however, is our home along the shores of Tampa Bay. If the storm makes landfall north of us, we’re toast. Helene’s storm surge hit us with about five feet of water two weeks ago. Milton’s surge is projected to be five to ten feet higher, and I don’t think the sprawling Pinsker Compound could handle that. If it does, all my clothes, furniture, and my bottlecap collection will be floating into the Gulf of Mexico, along with my collection of extremely rare Picassos. (At least, that’s what I’ll be telling the insurance company.)
If it’s mostly just wind and rain, Tampa Bay will survive. My house can handle a cat-3 and should still be standing after a cat-4. But the storm surge? Ouch.
That salt water is brutal. It just eats through everything. The power of moving water is a sight to behold: horrible, awesome, and deadly.
But the good news is, most current models of Milton’s landfall place it maybe 60 or so miles south of us. So it’s gonna be close. As a betting man, I’d say it’s now more likely than not that we won’t be homeless.
And it would really suck to be homeless. Not only did I just write an article goofing on ‘em, but let’s face it: being middle-aged and homeless is a bad look. I don’t even have a rap sheet or a crippling drug addiction to blame it on!
See, that’s the biggest problem with Acts of God: Who you gonna blame? Especially when a seismic, swirling cyclone of death targets your home just before the Day of Atonement. Getting kinda biblical out there!
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As I finish this article, we’re still all together, hanging out in our hotel room. Just got an alert on my phone that there's a tornado warning in our area for the next 40 minutes. So we’re away from the surge but not away from the chaos.
Lots of people are going to be killed.
And that’s the ultimate tragedy of waiting for landfall: we’re praying for Milton to hit south of us, but that will be catastrophic, too. So, we’re really asking/praying/pleading God to spare our home and destroy someone else’s.
Not a lot of nobility in that.
There’ll be time to sort these philosophical questions when Milton is no more, I guess. Right now, we’re joking, drinking, laughing, and snacking, waiting for our Darkest Hour to come.
And it’s not here yet.
But it’s starting to get awfully dark outside.
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