Did you know that the name Florence means blossoming, prosperous, flourishing?  Up until now I had no need to explore the meaning of the name.  Actually I have only known one person named Florence, so the name played no significance in my life until now.  Now Florence is impacting most of my thoughts and all of my immediate plans.

My normal activity on any given Tuesday is finalizing a menu plan for the week, grocery shopping, and posting a blog.  I am fairly regimented in that routine.  Thoughts for planning the meals for the next week has taken a back seat to following the weather.  We will be directly impacted by Florence and once again I have been glued to the weather channel.  I have also been giving a great deal of thought to food preparation in the case of power loss.

Normally the ‘Ole Buckeye is volunteering at the USO.  Today isn’t normal.  I am listening to the weather channel while doing meal prep.  The ‘Ole Buckeye is making trips to the hardware store, staging the garage, and determining what to relocate and where to relocate it.  The courtyard will need to be cleared.  He has already filled the cars and cans with gas, filled the propane, and purchased hardware to hard close the storm shutters.

Fortunately a grocery run is not in order.  Not only are the stores crowded, but the stock is low.   The fuel lines are long as well.  It is hard to believe that such a catastrophic storm is near when the weather is so beautiful.  I keep thinking about Hurricane Matthew and how prepared we were to flee days in advance.  At the time our son instructed that we relax…if the Navy jets were relocated, it would be the sign for us to move out.  They weren’t and we didn’t.

Well as I sit here writing this, the Navy ships have gone out to sea, and the harbor is nearly empty. Tomorrow the jets will be flown out.  I am reminded that this is a call to leave, but it is difficult to determine just where we would go.  The storm appears to be all consuming.  It is forecast to affect not only the coastline, but westward with extremely heavy rain. They predict historic flooding inland as far west as West Virginia and as far north as Pennsylvania.  There are thousands of residents living in areas more at risk than our’s.  Unless the forecast changes significantly, we will hunker down and hope that our preparations will be adequate.  There are so many that will be impacted by this storm, that our decision is to stay off the roads and allow those more severely impacted to find safe haven.

Virginia is divided into “zones” A, B, C, and D depending on how prone they are to flooding and/or being affected by storm surge.  “A” designates the lowest lying level.  We live in zone C and even during Matthew had no flooding.  That is not the case for my son and his family…they are in zone A.  The kicker…he will be relocating Navy jets on Wednesday. The girls will be on their own.  They are now planning to come bunk with us.

As I write this I think back on the past two years.  Our Septembers were similar.  We watched the forecast and became familiar with the personalities on the Weather Chanel.  This year the experience began a little sooner.  During our trip to Hawaii in August, we became all too familiar with Lane.  Now on the Atlantic side, Florence, 2 years ago Matthew, and last year Irma.  In fact as I thought about our coastal education I looked back at a post from last year.  What I found was uncanny.  The post was dated September 11, 2017.  Hurricane Reality

The sun is shining.  The air is calm.  The odd little ditty that the Weather Chanel plays every 8 minutes with local updates is dittying.  Ominous is how I feel.  I have had that same feeling before…that was then, this is now...again.