Guest Post by Dave Barry
Here’s how I know a hurricane is coming: We have lentils.
We NEVER eat lentils. I am not 100 percent sure what a lentil is. I do know for a fact that not once has anybody in our household ever said, “You know what would be great for dinner tonight? Lentils!”
But at the moment we have roughly a 45-year supply of lentils on hand. This is because we are in Hurricane Preparedness Freakout Mode, and one of the things we Floridians do in this mode is go to Publix and get in long lines to buy mass quantities of things we will never eat. Publix could put out a big display of cans labeled “Toad Intestines Packed In Snail Vomit” and we Floridians would snap them all up in minutes. That’s how prepared we are.
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My family did manage to secure a large supply of jerky, which we actually like. We chew it thoughtfully while we watch the Weather Channel people tell us, over and over and over, how screwed we are. All our jerky will be gone before Irma gets here.
When we’re not eating our hurricane supplies or waiting in line to buy more, we’re going on the Internet to check the computer models, which are these little lines on a map showing where various computers think the hurricane will go. Checking these lines makes me nervous, so I try not to do it too often. Once every six minutes is plenty. I root for the lines that have the hurricane going away from South Florida, but there’s always at least one line going straight toward me. If you zoom in really close, you see a little square at the end of this line labeled DAVE BARRY’S HOUSE. Sometimes I click on this line with my mouse and try to drag it out to sea, but evidently computer models don’t work that way.
As part of our preparedness we have a “whole house” generator, which is the size of a nuclear submarine but more expensive. We installed it after Wilma knocked out our power for a couple of weeks in 2005 and we all smelled like unlaundered jockstraps. We take good care of our generator: It gets serviced regularly, and it automatically tests itself every week. That is why I can calmly report that, with a major hurricane heading directly at my house, our generator, which has been well-treated for all these years and has never been asked to generate anything, IS NOT WORKING. Really. When I turn it on, it turns itself right back off. It is the French labor union of generators.
So I called our generator guy, a good and competent man named Ralph (I am sucking up here) who at the moment is dealing with frantic distress calls from pretty much every generator owner in the greater Florida-Georgia area. Ralph is hoping he can get us up and running before Irma gets here. If not, I will implement Plan B, which is to go to Home Depot and purchase – if there are any left – a bazooka. We’ll see how the French Labor Generator likes THAT.
“As part of our preparedness we have a “whole house” generator, which is the size of a nuclear submarine but more expensive.”
Considering most nuke subs have two turbine generators powered by a reactor..with a backup battery system…he got ripped off.
Hey Dave…….Get back to us next week with photos. I had this vision of you riding into this hurricane on your “whole house” generator like Slim Pickens (Kong) riding the bomb in “Dr. Strangelove” yelling, YEEEEEEHAAAAAA!!!
Good Luck Dave (you will need it).
Definitely fun.
What the author, Dave Barry, needs is a French hurricane. That would be one that retreats at the first sign of preparedness.
Dave would make a terrible MSMfuk reporter. MONSTER STORM!! WORST SINCE 1492!!! SUPPLIES RUNNING OUT!! EVAAAAACUATE NOOOOW!!! Dave sees through the bullshit.
DB’s article had me laughing out loud over some serious shit, and then Stucky’s first 2 sentences above were even funnier. Now I’m gettin’ all like…
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“Interstellar”…one of the best sci-fi flicks in a long time. The musical score by Hans Zimmer is wonderful.
If’n you can’t maintain your own doomsday supplies and equipment (to include spare parts) then evacuation should be your personal mantra. Why would anyone buy emergency foods they would not normally eat?
Reminds me of the assclowns around here that were on the local news bitching about not having a hot meal in days because of an ice storm while standing next to the gas grill on their porch. Perhaps they bought the model that only functions on warm, sunny days?
Here’s to hoping that the western-most track (CLP5 Climatology and Persistence 5 day model in orange) is the most accurate. Still plenty of time.
[img]https://my.sfwmd.gov/sfwmd/common/images/weather/plots/storm_11[/img]
It’d be nice if one of our genius leaders would dump one of their fancy fat bombs into the hurricane hole just to see what would happen. They’re already dicking around in there with the C-130 delivery vehicles just measuring things. Maybe a couple or 10 cruise missiles, too, just for the heck of it. It couldn’t hurt and maybe something interesting would happen.
Hey, Brother! I’ve had the same idea for a long time! My thought-let’s drop a Fuel Air Explosive, the biggest non-nuclear bomb in the world, into one of those depressions off the coast of Africa to see if we can abort the hurricane before it starts. Imagine if you could pour all that aerosolized fuel into an existing storm, and light that sucker up. It would be the coolest explosion ever. I mean, a miles-wide fire tornado over the ocean. Who wouldn’t want to see that? I was thinking if you detonated something that big next to it, maybe you could destabilize it or change its track.
NKIT, we should be praying that the storm takes the eastern-most track. The right side of the storm is the nasty, powerful, rain-soaking, tornado generating main body. The orange track would hammer the entire Gulf Coast of Florida, Georgia and Alabama.
I hope Mr. Barry lives through the storm, and does not experience undue hardship in the aftermath – I really do. As a Harvey survivor, helping pick up the pieces, I assure you that there is nothing funny about a hurricane.
With all due respect, Bob, the western-most track CLP5 is nearly the exact track that CAT 5 hurricane Ivan took in 2004, making landfall in the Pensacola area..the same predicted landfall as CLP5. Granted Irma is a very wide storm but even so, with that track it would be far enough out from where I live in west central Fla (over 300 miles away laterally) such that its impact on me would be negligible. As it stands now I’ll be preparing for the right front quadrant Sunday evening – nothing to look forward to. I agree that a northerly turn off the east coast of Fla would have been best, but when I typed my previous comment that option was totally off the table.
Disclaimer: I’m not a meteorologist nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night. I have, however, lived in Florida for 50 of my 60 plus some years and have been through a hurricane or two or..