just trying to enjoy the rain
A positive and personal relationship with rain that was based on a childhood full of memories of rainy hurricane days is now forever altered by a 1-in-1000-year storm.
By Elizabeth Sgro
Published on Oct. 12 2022
My eyes fluttered open to the sound of my 9 o’clock alarm alerting me of the new day ahead. The birds chirped peacefully, and the sun shone upon another glorious Tuesday in Eugene, Oregon. It was also my first day of classes; a lot was on my mind. I hit snooze and rolled over to stare at the ceiling.
I remembered that exactly a year ago, I woke up to pouring rain on my first day of college. That day, I recalled feeling like I was back home amid hurricane season in my hometown of Sarasota, Florida. Classic, sunny beach days are a staple to any Florida-based childhood; but the rainy days are the ones that you remember. It’s not like the dreadful, cold rain that’s common in Eugene, but rather hot, pouring, quick rain. Rain that's fun to run into; fun to drive in; fun to watch; fun to enjoy.
As I began to fall back asleep and think more about the rain that I missed, my phone buzzed—a text from my dad. With that text, I began my first day of sophomore year of college by asking Twitter: “what is Hurricane Ian?”
Waking up to doomsday tweets trending on Twitter has become a social norm in the news, so seeing pathway projections, evacuation plans, and Facebook community panic posts in response to the development of Hurricane Ian made my family and I laugh. We didn’t think the hurricane was going to be that bad. It couldn’t be. Reports always project hurricane paths early on. They project that the storm will go right over my house through the state of Florida when, in reality, the storm dies down or spins off to another location through the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic before even reaching the Sarasota coastline by my house. The news was doing what the news does best and sounding the alarm for a disaster about to strike.
Watching the news as a journalism student means picking apart the severity and bias behind each statement and news event. It also means doing your research, but in this case, my judgment was clouded by personal hurricane experience and I was led towards a path of dismissive behavior and inaction. I’ve come to learn that reporters present information in a drastic, severe tone to instill fear-based rash action within the viewers and create chaos.
Being raised in Florida for the last 17 years means having a childhood where your perspectives are skewed by parents on scary things, like being hit by a hurricane. While some kids have fun snow days, we had days off due to flooding or rain. Some of my best childhood memories consist of hurricane parties, floating in the ocean as rain hit my face, and playing with friends in flooded parks and parking lots after school.
These experiences have made these scary events easier and more fun to endure, but as I get older, I realize it may be a naive way to look at life. Nonetheless, based on the calm texts and updates from my parents throughout the day, I was quick to dismiss the severity of the storm.
Photo by Crystal Vander Weit, USA Today Network
It was getting closer to the time for the first main arm of the storm to hit land. Updating by the minute, the consensus by news channel projections the night before the big surge showed the main path cutting inwards towards Fort Myers, about an hour south of Sarasota. I was aware of the rain and brush debris my house would experience but it was only a category 2 storm, so everyone would still be fine, right? “Maybe the power would go out for a few hours or some minor flooding,” I thought. That was wishful thinking.
Hours later, Hurricane Ian was trending on Twitter. It had gained strength and was potentially going to be a category 4 storm. With fewer than 24 hours before the storm was predicted to hit Fort Myers, Lee County and federal officials announced a mandatory evacuation advisory for zones A, B, and C which were all in line for a direct hit. Panic began to trickle in. "My house has gone through so many of these storms," I thought to myself, "there's no way my parents will evacuate—It'll be fine." I texted my parents, and they replied with videos of some collapsed trees in the street and miscellaneous branches scattered throughout our flower beds. Our yard had also become a muddy stretch of drowning grass with indentations from the heavy path of water flowing into our flooding street.
We live on a hill in classic outer suburbia. Even though I was relieved my house and family were fine, I began to think of how all the places I know and loved were going to be different in the next 24 hours. “How on earth will Myakka get through it if the storm hasn’t even hit? What about the Longboat Key? Key West? Fort Myers?” These are all areas with either low elevation, poor draining, or close proximity to the beach. For the first time in my life, a hurricane was starting to scare me.
Nothing could have prepared me for the wake-up call the next morning.
Hurricane Ian struck the state of Florida in Fort Myers at 3:05 pm on Wednesday, September 27th, with 150 mph winds as a category 4, nearly a category 5. It produced “over 12 inches of rainfall in just 12 to 24 hours'' according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) presented in a CNN article by Angela Fritz and Brandon Miller. NOAA’s data also suggests that this intense rainfall is a 1-in-1000-year event. The article by Fritz and Miller also references a rapid analysis from Stony Brook University and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory that mentions “Hurricane Ian’s rainfall was at least 10% wetter because of climate change.” This statistic was previously estimated and said that it should have only been around 5%, but now we know that, even though climate change isn't the reason for the storm, it is a big reason for the intense flooding. This also shows that climate change is making these types of storms “stronger and pushing them to intensify faster” according to Fritz and Miller.
As of Tuesday, October 4, over 391,000 houses and businesses were still without power in Fort Myers. With this, more information is difficult to attain from the ground. But based on what has been collected and presented from a scientist's perspective in the media, Hurricane Ian is now known as one of the worst storms to hit the state of Florida since the early 20th century and is also the fifth-strongest storm to ever hit the United States. With a current death toll of 119 people, the aftermath of a storm like this being talked about and shown on social media is a wake-up call I will never forget.
Now, as I wake up in the morning to the birds chirping and the sun shining, I will remember to never take my situation for granted, as many are not as fortunate. Even though I am waking up on the other side of the country feeling useless in relief efforts for my friends and family who are struggling to piece their lives back together, I remind myself that I have a job here. As an aspiring scientific communicator, it is my job to watch the news, listen to the science, and interpret the findings to my peers and community. With my close ties to this disaster, I have a responsibility to tell the story of those affected — of those who need our help.
Listed below are the top resources providing direct relief efforts for those affected by Hurricane Ian. Please be aware of these resources and remind yourself that, no matter the distance, we are all affected by the worsening climate crisis. We have a job to do in providing support for those who were also just trying to enjoy the rain—and those who maybe didn’t have a choice.
Photo by Marco Bello, REUTERS