Dorian Roars Toward South Florida

by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist

While hurricane season in the Atlantic Basin (Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and the Gulf of Mexico) officially runs from June 1^st through November 30, the “peak” of the storm season is from mid-August through late October.  We are now two weeks into the peak season for Atlantic hurricanes, and “Dorian,” described as a “monster” hurricane, is headed for the Florida coast and may make landfall somewhere near Palm Beach this coming Monday or Tuesday.

Dorian is so large and unpredictable that all counties in Florida have been placed under an emergency alert. 

Donald Trump, who didn’t get overly excited when Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in 2017 – and thought that the damage could probably be mitigated with plenty of paper towels, has kicked his personal interest in this new hurricane, Dorian, into overdrive.  Trump, who owns two major resort properties that lie directly in the hurricane’s path, has bailed on a planned overseas trip and instead will stay in the US – but safely away from Florida – to monitor the storm.  

It has not yet been announced where Trump will play golf this weekend now that Mar-a-Lago will be unavailable.   It is also unknown whether the infamous bedbugs at Trump’s resort properties are tough enough to withstand the onslaught of a Category 4 hurricane, but local betting parlors are reportedly favoring the Trump cockroaches to survive the storm with relative ease.

(Former Canadian Prime Minister Kim Campbell, the only woman to have ever held that post, tweeted that she was “rooting for a direct hit on Mar-a-Lago.”  Ms. Campbell went on to say that she knows Palm Beach well and wishes the best for the people there.)

And, catty remarks about Trump aside, no one wants to see personal injuries and deaths – or catastrophic damage, from this or any other storm.

Dorian is the fourth named Atlantic storm this season, and by far the most serious.

According to a recent article in The Old Farmer’s Almanac, the World Meteorological Association names the hurricanes.  The group creates six lists of twenty-one-names each for the Atlantic storms and six lists of twenty-one names each for the Pacific. They run one list each year for each ocean, and at the end of the six-year cycle, they begin repeating the names. Hurricanes that proved to be especially destructive have their names retired.

The Atlantic hurricane names for this season include:  Andrea, Barry, Chantal, Dorian, Erin, Fernand, Gabrielle, Humberto, Imelda, Jerry, Karen, Lorenzo, Melissa, Nestor, Olga, Pablo, Rebekah, Sebastian, Tamra, Van, and Wendy.  If all names on a list are used during one storm season, they begin using the names of letters from the Greek alphabet:  Alpha, Beta, etc.

The Old Farmer’s Almanacs stressed that it does not create the names, and it asked that its readers refrain from sending hurricane name suggestions to their offices.

But back to Dorian: Hurricanes are dangerous, and this one looks to be deadly.  Pack up and get out, or hunker down – but stay safe!