In the late 50's, Hurricane Audrey came ashore in that big empty part of Louisiana between the Texas Line and New Orleans. The earliest memory I have is my Dad, carrying a 4-year old me through a dark living room . . . . . through waist-deep water on that grown man.
He carried me out through the garage, into a howling rain, to our next door neighbor's house, and old-timer that was way up off the ground on piles and piles of cinder block risers (our house was a slab house on the ground). He climbed up the front steps onto the porch which was just out of the flood water. My Mom and Dad and the neighbors stayed up all night making percolator coffee on a gas range (electricity was long gone by then) and listening to a battery radio and waiting it out. Me, my sister, and the neighbor kids slept on pallets on the floor, and I still remember the wind and thunder and hearing the water lapping under the house just beneath the floor as I lay there.
Folks that grow up on the Gulf Coast get used to it in a way (as I suppose Californians endure fires and occasional window-rattler), but never completely. I've lived in Tennessee since '90, and EVERY time there's a storm incoming on the Gulf Coast, I'm STILL glued to the Weather Channel as if I still lived there. Mrs. Wilson (born and raised Nashvillian) has seen too many Jimmy Buffet videos and thought she'd like to live 'at the beach'. I've unfortunately burst that bubble: It's great, but every so often you got to pay for the privelege, and we're too old to evacuate or rebuild. Shame . . . . .
Greg, you take good care of yourself and BE CAREFUL, OK ? ?