The Great Storm of 1987

This weekend, with evidently nothing better to do, The Boy sat down to watch The Weather Channel feature...10 Worst Hurricanes Ever! A certain curiosity with these things is to be expected around here.

A very pregnant Martha next to a downed live oak after tornadoes in 08.

 

Hurricanes are a regular feature of this part of the country and when they come they dominate the news...and they are featured events in people's lives and a recurring topic of conversation. Of course, a storm has to be a real monster to reach Jackson as a hurricane. Katrina managed it at Category 2.

The view from our driveway in Spring of 08.

 



The most direct threat for us is tornadoes. There were two (edit:make that five) yesterday down around Hattiesburg. So interest in severe weather is natural. He's a little obsessed though. This is Martha's doing but we shame her here...at least not at Christmas time.

Anyway, after watching the show and after 800 more questions about Katrina, he has begun to fixate on the Great Storm of 1987...a Hurricane (like?) storm in England has struck him as very curious and he's telling everybody about it and then asking questions. Like I said :coughMarthacough: he's got some weather issues.

I told him I knew where we could get some answers....Q.



No that didn't help (well it helped me..to force coffee through my nasal cavity...my favorite of the weather forcasts). I told him I'd ask y'all about. Anything you can convey about your own experience with the Storm will be passed on an much appreciated.

And Merry Christmas y'all.


Ice Cream taste better when you got no 'lectricity...and when you're pregnant.

Bop Bop Bopda Ba Debris Fries

Debris Fries from the Fillin' Station in Biloxi.

 

Last week we ran down to The Coast for a few days vacation. It was a real rocknroll party.

 

 





You see what looks like a pair of glasses layin' next to the Boy as he sleeps...they're actually night vision spy goggles. He got 'em for his birthday just before we left....but, why he would need to see anything after dark I don't know. Him and his Momma go to bed around 6 in the evenin'...just after Wheel of Fortune.

Fortunately, for The Boy, you can find love in the light of the day...at The Shed.  This girl, who is not his girlfriend OK, is a recording artist....between her own songs she hosted an open mic. It was fun...some of 'em kids. So, not too raucous for these two.

I'm sorry. What was that? Did we hear Give Me One Reason to Stay Here by Tracy Chapman?

Stop being a smartass.

We did manage to make it down to the water every day. These "beaches" along the Coast are man made...sand dumped over what would be marshy shore. They're not the powdered sugar "World Most Beautiful Beaches" along the coast in Alabama and the Panhandle of Florida. Give it another 10,000 years and maybe the pulverized quartz, that came down from the Appalacians, after the last ice age, which make those beaches so impossibly white, will work it's way to Ocean Springs. I don't know if that will have any effect on the murky water though. You get glowing turquoise in Destin...here you get Lipton.

There is Ship Island...a sliver of a barrier island about 11 miles south of Gulfport. There's a group of these islands that run parallel to the coast but every hurricane takes a big chunk out of them.

 

I was looking for pictures and this one popped up from here. *

 



Very pleasant out there...clear water and sand. You can walk probably a quarter of mile when the tides right.

Fort Massawhatever is out there. It started life as a Confederate post but, the island was impossible to keep supplied and the Yankees took it over and built this in 1867. Nothing much happened out there unless you were one of these unfortunate few...

It's about an hour by ferry out there. It's a pleasant enough trip...dolphins usually come around.

It was a good time.  Look forward to doing it again.


*Mail readers...ha. You'll never get that off your computer.