Hurricane Season

This weekend, we weathered Hurricane Irene as she came ashore in North Carolina.  Now being in Charlotte, this meant just some stronger winds and what amounted to fall-like weather, which my aunt and I enjoyed while sitting outside drinking wine.  But my mind was elsewhere.  Almost 6 years ago to the day, I was a giddy freshman at Tulane University.  I was worried about 1000 things besides the hurricane churning around the Gulf.  After living in Tennessee my whole life, I knew the dangers of tornadoes, but was blissfully unaware of the power of hurricanes.  After getting most of my things unpacked and meeting my roommate, my dad and I were going to go to the bookstore when the RA's called everyone out into the hall.  Since Katrina was not suppose to directly hit New Orleans, they decided to just postpone school for 3 days.  My dad and I left New Orleans with every intention of coming back shortly.  I was thrilled to have a few more days of summer with my Memphis friends.  However, 3 days turned into 2 weeks, which turned into the cancellation of school until January.  So while I only lived in New Orleans for 1 night, all my things and clothes got to stay there for 3 months.   I was allowed to return to Tulane in November to retrieve my things from the dorm.  Here are some of the photos I took while there.  This was almost 3 months after Katrina hit.

I was thinking about this experience a lot the past couple days as I read tweets and new articles about Hurricane Irene.  While many people found it a pain in the ass and superfluous to have the NY transit system shut down, mandatory evacuations across the east coast, and so many other precautions taken, I am glad that government officials actually learned from Katrina.  While Katrina was a cat 5, with 175 mile an hour winds, and caused over 1800 fatalities, Irene seems to have mellowed out quite a bit.  I am thankful for this, and am eagerly awaiting the news from the coast.