(7) Charlie – Aftermath
Earlier in the evening we had watched apprehensively through a glowing orange haze as towering clouds displaced the sun. The night approached with the atmosphere quietly radioactive. The sky was remarkably beautiful for the menace that it held. For those among us, the very young and those still naive, who marvelled at the magic of electricity, who still found inconceivable the reception of utterings of voices remotely placed in some distant radio studio, the prophesy of the hourly radio broadcasts warning of the possible, then the probable arrival of the hurricane was like an epilogue to the book of Revelations.
As the storm approached, the radio accounts of the hurricane became more frequent and progressively more incantatory. Now the regular programming was interrupted at ten minute intervals to impress upon us the importance of preparing for the inevitable event. The repeated and nearly unvarying reports of the progress of the hurricane, its current location, its general direction, the speed of its winds, the area it occupies and its likely time and specific location of arrival. The repetition, the rhythm, the prosody, the stilted language, the jargon of meteorology, in a culture not normally given to much interest in meteorology, lent an air of expectant cataclysm to the 48 hours before the storm.
Less than 24 hours before landfall, we were assured that barring some miraculous intervention, we were to be the next victim of a hurricane with winds up to 135 m.p.h near the centre. With a diameter of 250 miles, moving at a speed of 15-20 m.p.h, we could expect to be involved with our nemesis for about 12 hours. We could expect that the winds would blow from the east, north east for the first part of our ordeal. There would be a short period, the eye, of about an hour during which there would be little or no wind. We should, however, be under no illusion that this was the end of our trial. We should stay under shelter because the winds would pick up, this time from the west, south west to batter us until some twelve hours after its arrival, it blew itself out and drifted, weakened, into the Gulf of Mexico.
As the storm approached, the radio accounts of the hurricane became more frequent and progressively more incantatory. Now the regular programming was interrupted at ten minute intervals to impress upon us the importance of preparing for the inevitable event. The repeated and nearly unvarying reports of the progress of the hurricane, its current location, its general direction, the speed of its winds, the area it occupies and its likely time and specific location of arrival. The repetition, the rhythm, the prosody, the stilted language, the jargon of meteorology, in a culture not normally given to much interest in meteorology, lent an air of expectant cataclysm to the 48 hours before the storm.
Less than 24 hours before landfall, we were assured that barring some miraculous intervention, we were to be the next victim of a hurricane with winds up to 135 m.p.h near the centre. With a diameter of 250 miles, moving at a speed of 15-20 m.p.h, we could expect to be involved with our nemesis for about 12 hours. We could expect that the winds would blow from the east, north east for the first part of our ordeal. There would be a short period, the eye, of about an hour during which there would be little or no wind. We should, however, be under no illusion that this was the end of our trial. We should stay under shelter because the winds would pick up, this time from the west, south west to batter us until some twelve hours after its arrival, it blew itself out and drifted, weakened, into the Gulf of Mexico.
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