A Hurricane From Here

When the news announced that Hurricane Milton’s landfall would be “catastrophic,” I was far from the storm, running by the Charles River under a light blue sky. The weather here in Cambridge is rarely nicer than it was that week — a respite from the typical northeastern grayness. The weather in my hometown, Tampa, Fla., is more like a chaotic toddler. In the mornings, the sun hugs you and its warmth sinks deep into your bones, but dark clouds and big sticks of lightning roll in almost every afternoon this time of year, like clockwork.

“Are you nervous or no?” I texted my best friend back home, nine hours before landfall.

“Maybe I’m delusional or desensitized but I’m only like 10% worried,” she sent back.

I’ve never worried much about incoming hurricanes, and I’m still not sure that I do. I’ve lived through nine and my family has only ever evacuated once. We got a week off school for Hurricane Irma, so my mom drove me, my siblings and our two friends to the east coast of Florida and stayed in the Marlboro Red-stenched house of our friend’s deadbeat dad. The storm hit worse there than Tampa. I remember sitting in the bathtub and making up dances to Bruno Mars songs. Even though the storm knocked out the power, it was just wind and rain. Wind and lots and lots of rain.

That’s why I never worried. Somehow, being home, it’s easier not to worry. When I can walk outside and feel the wind and the rain, I can rely on my own gut. But this time, I am an outsider, relying on secondhand information. We wonder in Florida why the national news media covers every hurricane like it’s the worst ever.

By Courtesy of Asher Montgomery

Back home, we listen to our local weathermen, like ABC Action News’ Dennis Phillips, who has a list of hurricane rules many of us know by heart. Rule #4: “Don’t freak out.” Rule #5: “Don’t freak out. Ok? We live in Florida. It goes with the territory.” Rule #7: “Stop freaking out … until I tell you to. We’re fine.”

In some ways, it makes it hard to trust the headlines. So what do I do when I have to rely on them? “Floridians Warned ‘You are Going to Die’ If They Don’t Evacuate” I read in The Guardian about 30 hours before landfall. Articles and news segments calling Milton the “Storm of the Century” flood my social media. Their words convince me my parents are crazy to stay put. I imagine the worst.

To everyone else watching the national news headlines, I seem too relaxed. At school, people ask me how my family is, and I say, “It’s fine. We do this every year,” which is true.

When I called my mom 15 hours before landfall, she said we only evacuated during Irma because someone told her she would be a bad mom if she didn’t bring us somewhere safer. She’s never evacuated since. This time, she boarded up her windows with artwork and scrap wood. Ten hours after landfall she posted a photo on Instagram of a waterlogged couch on a sidewalk and wrote in the caption: “This buddy has sat on a sidewalk for 12 hurricanes and 32 unnamed storms. He doesn’t give up. WHY SHOULD YOU???”

I understand where she’s coming from. When October rolls around and the next hurricane is announced and newcomers descend upon the stores to buy all the toilet paper, we laugh. The people packing up the trunks of their cars are essentially announcing that they’re not from here. To us, to be a true Floridian is to stay.

But my mom sent a text to our family group chat 48 hours before landfall: “I’m so glad y’all aren’t here,” followed by four black hearts.

Two days later she texted me asking if she should position her car “to where a tree will probably fall on it, or to where a tree will for sure fall on it?”

I knew she was being funny but she often jokes in seriousness. Concerned, I called her. She planned to stay — she has too many cats to leave. So I checked in often to ask for her plan, but there wasn’t much else I knew to do. She said she filled the sinks with water and blasted the AC. I am not sure how those things help, but she added that if it got bad they would take our dog and evacuate to her windowless flood-proof shuffleboard bar. It sounded like a somewhat solid plan to me.

Early my freshman year, the first time I experienced a hurricane from Cambridge (Hurricane Ian), I received an email from the yard dean that said something like, “We are here to support you through this trying time.” I laughed out loud. Two hours before, my dad had sent me a 20 second video. In it, he wears a rain jacket and dark shorts. The rain is slanted, and the wind whips the trees from side to side. His friend, in a bright yellow poncho, lights the end of a large mortar, like it’s the Fourth of July. They stand back and raise their right hands in a salute as the firecracker sails into the clouds. A big Wu-Tang Clan flag flutters in the corner of the screen, above a familiar, ripped-up Jolly Roger and a pride flag with Joe Biden’s face on it. They aren’t your traditional Florida men, but they’re pretty close. They believe the storm can’t hurt them. I believe it too.

The author's father wades through water during Hurricane Ian. By Courtesy of Asher Montgomery

There’s a local legend, offensive to some but oft’ repeated, that the Indigenous people have something to do with protecting Tampa Bay from a direct hurricane hit. It persists because no matter how many times Tampa is thought to be in the direct path, the storm always seems to skew north or south at the last minute.

Hurricane Milton challenged this sense of invincibility for me more than any previous storm, although a lot of the damage was humanity’s own fault. A giant crane fell on the building my dad used to work in, destroying it. Why did they leave the crane there? Other damage was less avoidable. The Hillsborough River swelled and flooded our friends’ homes and apartments, sweeping away everything from birth certificates to televisions. Maybe we aren’t supposed to live there on the river bank.

Considering our neighboring areas, Tampa itself fared well. Along the nearby Alafia River, some homes remained swamped by water more than a week later. The hotels from St. Pete Beach to Clearwater were covered in sand. People lost their lives in the swell and from outshooting tornadoes. At my mom’s bar, a tree fell and crushed the back fence, and she still has no power at home a week after landfall. But the boat my dad lives on stayed afloat and my mom’s house is undamaged, as is most of downtown. The sun will rise on my lucky city yet again.

There’s no doubt hurricanes are getting worse, but frustrated with inaccurate forecasts, I just can’t help but wonder when the full predictions of their destruction will actually come true. The damage was bad, but it didn’t reach the extent that the news foretold — it rarely does. It feels like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, and I am both the unconvinced villager and also the one at risk of losing everything.

A few weeks after landfall, I wondered how we should deal with this abnormal tradition that may grow more catastrophic each time. I asked my mom, and she said she hadn’t thought much about that. It’s just about rebuilding for now.

And even in this aftermath, I still mostly believe we’re perpetually invincible. I know that if I were home, I would have stayed put.

I’m not home though. I’ve been experiencing the hurricane from here in Cambridge, on the fence between hope and heartache. Maybe my people are foolish, but I know for a fact that they’re resilient and unafraid. My friends ask about my family, and I tell them they’re fine as I scroll through photos of Tampeños wading through the floodwaters, photos of broken signs, photos of huge oak trees that have toppled in places I recognize, on streets I’ve walked, on yards in which I once played. I think to myself, yeah, it looks bad. But really, it could have been much, much worse.

By Courtesy of Asher Montgomery

— Staff writer Asher J. Montgomery can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her on X @asherjmont.