Florida Weather as Experienced by a Native

By Catherine Frederick on October 4, 2017

When I was 12, I went to a summer camp in the Florida Keys. Since this was a) Florida and b) summer, there were a lot of storms. Something that I’ve found through travelling outside of Florida, is that people from other places define a storm differently. In some places, bad weather is a misting of rain and an overcast sky. In other places, it’s strong winds and fat rain drops. In other places, people call out “bring you umbrella,” on your way out of the door if it’s so much as drizzling.

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So, when I say that there were a lot of storms, I don’t want you to misunderstand what I mean. I don’t mean ‘it rained a lot.’ I mean ‘the skies turned black and there was enough lightning that you could find your way in the dark.’ For myself and all of the other native Floridians, we were unfazed. This was a sleepaway camp, however, so several kids were from other places, where a lightning storm was a once-a-season thing, and not a several-times-a-week occurrence.

There was one girl who worked herself into a frenzy, insisting that we were all going to die, that we would all be washed away by the storm. This was the first ever time that I truly realized how different experiences can change how people view things that, to me, were mundane events.

By now, you non-Floridians have experienced your first hurricane. You have probably also experienced how nonchalantly the Floridians around you handled it. Which was mostly through the purchase of alcohol and the making of memes. While you were trying to book flights, make evacuation plans, and soothe the terror of your out-of-state parents, Florida native students were brushing off your concern.

“It’ll be fine,” I told one of my friends. “The chances of it actually hitting us are tiny.”

Obviously, this was incorrect. Kind of. You see, we did get hit by the hurricane. Which I was always expecting. The hurricane was huge. There was very little chance of us avoiding some of the damage that was going to be wrought by the hurricane. But what most Floridians (at least the ones that I know) will tell you, is that if you aren’t getting hit by the eye of the hurricane, or you’re not living right where it’s breaking ground, you aren’t really getting hit by a hurricane.

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Some places are underwater right now. Those places got hit by a hurricane. Us? Not so much.

So, we probably seemed a little crazy to you. Yeah, we bought water and some non-perishable food, but we typically left the roads clear for those who genuinely needed it; those with mandatory evacuation orders, for example. Even those Floridians from non-mandatory evacuation areas that did leave weren’t so much running as they were going.

Every Florida kid who says something like. “I hope we get hit, but just, like, a little hit, you know?” knows that it’s because a minor hit by a hurricane can typically mean a few days off of classes while the downed trees are moved out of the way. So, when that extra time opens up, we might as well go visit those out of state friends that we haven’t seen in a while.

But to those of you who are from out of state and didn’t feel up to facing the hurricane, that’s okay. There were a lot of worried parents calling from out of state and demanding that you return to them, so that they’d know where you were and that you safe, outside of the path of a Category 5 hurricane that had been assigned names like, “devastating” and “record breaking.” And it was a good excuse to get out of the heat of Florida and visit family or friends. But, in the future, because hurricane season is still upon us, here are some tricks for embracing your inner Floridian:

1) Don’t let the weather reports consume you.

Yeah, you want to listen to them, but if that’s all you watch in the week building up to the hurricane, you’re going to get a lot more worried than you really need to be,

2) Don’t let other people whip you into a frenzy.

‘Other people’ includes friends and family. If you’re an out of state student who is only friends with other out of state students, you should keep in mind that you’ve all got the same level of inexperience with hurricanes and that you’re just feeding off of the fear and uncertainty of the person next to you.

3) Buy water, granola bars, flashlights, and batteries.

These are the main ones. Obviously, you can mix it up with things like beef jerky, Gatorade  Powerade (we’re Seminoles, we have our pride), and canned food, but just remember the basics and you’re pretty much covered.

4) Embrace the memes and go to a hurricane party (if you’re 21 or older)

If you were on Facebook at all leading up to the hurricane, you probably saw a truly impressive amount of memes and events being created in honor of the arrival of hurricane Irma. While many people outside of Florida were sending their thoughts and prayers, we Floridians were putting ourselves down as ‘attending’ events like, ‘Point All the Fans at Irma to Blow it Away,” with good humor.

So, basically, if you were panicking, you just haven’t been here long enough yet. I promise, it gets easier the longer you live here. Or maybe it’s just the bath salts in the water supply, slowly making you crazy.

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