I moved to the Gulf Coast in 2000.

Fleeing a sociopath, I landed on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico.

I didn’t want to be here. I’m a mountain girl! I hate hot weather – and cockroaches, and humidity…and hurricanes.

My first serious brush with The Weather Channel happened in 1985. I had moved to the Gulf Coast with my newborn son. Three days later, we evacuated north, escaping a forecasted hurricane that was headed directly toward our town.

I knew nothing about hurricanes. I had lived in tornado alley, and resided in states where feet of snow fell overnight. I had seen hailstorms knock the heads off every tulip in the yard.

Hurricanes are another monster all together.

In that summer of 1985, we fled without my USAF pilot father. Daddy had to stay and fly planes to safety.

From the next state up, I’d wake in the middle of the night, tiptoeing into the living room to check the latest update. I didn’t really understand anything about hurricanes – I just was very concerned for my dad.

After a couple of days we returned home, to a safe Daddy, and to minimal storm damage.

By the end of hurricane season that year, we had evacuated two more times.

When I came back in 2000, I never left. My family of origin was here, and my growing children settled here. I had to adapt.

I started following the National Hurricane Center. I monitored local and European spaghetti models, watching satellite images for signs of the eye forming – or more ominously, becoming tight and compact. I watched the barometric pressure, becoming lackadaisical about any storm less than a category 3. The tropical storms and cat 1-3 were “rode out”. I knew the west side was the best side – so storms that turned east made me relax.

Even with all technology, though, you can’t trust the storm once it gets into the warm, open waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

It’s 0300 and I’ve got the National Weather Service site up. I’m following each update, looking at the central pressure, and zooming in on the most current projected path.

My husband, elderly parents, children, and grandchildren are not in the “cone of uncertainty” – that delineated area that is most likely to have a direct landfall.

They are close to it, though. as I sit at my desk at work as a travel nurse on night shift, I’m uneasy.

Gas lines are already long back home, and gas stations are running out of fuel. The cavalier locals are preparing to have their hurricane parties.

I just want my family to be safe – knowing that even as I wish the rapidly strengthening storm to continue to head away from them, I know it will wreak certain havoc on others – dear friends who are directly in the current path.

I’m not a fan of hurricanes. I’m grateful for the technology I can follow – but I’d still rather be somewhere far from the Gulf Coast, surrounded by my family in cooler – and safer – climes.