Miramar Beach, FL (Part 2/2)

Beachfront Site + Storm = A Scary Situation

I have often found myself surprised by N.’s appetite and tolerance for risk. Whether it be for business, hobbies, or even dreams, he’s always brimmed with not only ambition but also carefree optimism. I’ve also read that differences in risk-tolerance and risk-aversion often fall along gender lines.

We are a good case study.

My weather app this morning announced menancingly, “There is a likely risk of severe weather today. Wind, tornadoes and hail are possible. Look out for powerful tornadoes. Have a plan and be prepared.”

I saw the forecast on my phone while still in bed, not quite fully awake. The first thing I did was call the camp office and ask whether it would be possible to move our van to a more sheltered site in the back of the campground. I don’t know much about physics and atmospheric science, but I had a feeling that our little van would shake less between two Class A RV’s than it would parked in this oceanfront site — coincidentally oceanfront sites also happen to be tornado-front sites. Obviously, the birds had their own internal weather app, for they were flying away, probably somewhere safer. Smart.

Yes, the nice lady at the office said, there was an empty site we could move to for the day. She was very kind, but I sensed in the tone in her voice a slight amusement at my cautious attitude. I assumed that, as a local, she was used to hurricanes, and we were not expecting hurricanes. But the winds were whipping the waves into a frenzy and leading to high surf advisories and rip current warnings. Even when there were breaks in the rain, walking outside led to a full body sandy massage.

I pointed again to the forecast, but N. did not want to move.

”The app says, ’have a plan’ but it doesn’t say to do anything! Besides, I think the waves are a bit anti-climactic — I thought they would be much higher!”

***

[Disclaimer: in this section, Dear Reader, increase the level of resentment and fear in the text by 30.9 percent. It’s been more than 24 hours since the experience described, and aforementioned resentment and fear mellowed a bit.]

All afternoon, I checked the weather app. Coming to think of it, I’m not sure why, since my obsessive checking would not have had any impact on the trajectory of the weather system. I guess I was wishing for the storm to change course by the sheer intensity of my fears.

Neither of us tried to read a book or watch a movie — nothing seemed fitting to the occasion except obsessively refreshing the app. Videos described damages to our west in New Orleans, which had lost power and sustained devastation in the metro area. Refresh again. Wish again.

Around 8 pm, the radar showed patches of ominous red close to our location. Actually, by that point we didn’t really need the app since we could feel exactly what was going on: the wind was howling outside and the waves were thundering in response. Our little van — happy before for the absence of neighbors on either side, now forlorn and friendless in our corner of the campground — shook as if it were dancing to a funky beat. On a different frequency, hail (weather app: “max hail size = 0.75 inches”) began to pelt our van.

All this had been predicted in the forecast I had read this morning. But only now did N. decide it was time to act. He was suddenly full of ideas, bringing down the shades (“in case glass shatters”), telling me to wear a jacket (for the same reason), keeping the van unlocked (“if we have to abandon it in a hurry”). The fact that he felt the need to do these things made me even more scared.

So there I was, suffering from a serious case of schadenfreude… except for the fact that I was also a participant in his misery. I was fuming that he had not heeded my earlier calls for storm preparation — we could have moved earlier to the camp site away from the beachfront — but now he wanted me to follow his lead as Mr. Action. In response, I acted like Ms. Petulant Child and refused to do any of the things he was suggesting.

When we eventually hit a calm patch in the weather system, N. grabbed the keys and drove slowly to another site — the one I had inquired about upon first reading the forecast that morning, the one away from the beach. Unless we take a ride on a time machine to an alternate universe, there is no way to tell whether our scary experience beachfront would have been any less so away from it. Still, when another spell of bad weather passed over us later, the van did not dance the boogie.

In another break in the weather, I made a show of walking back to our old site and picking up the power cord N. had unplugged but left behind on the ground. I was genuinely afraid that the wind was going to whip it up and cause damage to other RV’s; I also partially did it because I was mad at him.

***

The next morning, it was another sunny and calm and beautiful day.