Waiting on Bill that isn’t Bill as this is written

Update: The National Weather Service forecast station in Lake Charles, La., the forecast office for my area, will have an update on the storm at 7 p.m. CDT and can be watched on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7j6DFDSH4Zo

BEAUMONT, Texas

6:15 p.m. CDT

Whoopee!!! It’s hurricane season again. And it looks as if the first tropical disruption might be official this evening. The “whoopee” is facetiousness.

I made a bit of money reporting and writing during the whole Katrina/Rita/Humberto/Ike set of tropical cyclones over the 2005-2008 time frame. Seems like I am leaving one off. I am certain there was another one. It didn’t hit here but there were some evacuations. I can’t remember. So many storms, so few memory cells. Nevertheless, I am here to tell you that tropical storms, hurricanes, pretty much suck. Thought I was going to say “blow” didn’t you? Well, that too.

Hurricanes, even tropical depressions can kill. That doesn’t happen much in the United States with exceptions, such as Katrina the most recent deadly storm. But dangerous tropical cyclones run up huge death tolls in some of the less-developed locales on the planet.

A couple of reasons for the lower body count in the U.S. is not because of the storms itself but because of improved warning systems and folks adhering to those admonitions. Although, some people still aren’t easily warned.

Even today, Hurricane Katrina in August 2005 remains a source of investigation from seemingly every type of social and physical science. A total of about 1,800 people in the U.S. — from Florida and Georgia to Louisiana — died from the storm. The toll in Louisiana alone was almost 1,600 and around 240 in Mississippi. Several reasons were found in studies why Katrina’s casualty count was that on par of a disaster-torn “third-world country.” Flooding and its death toll in New Orleans were directly tied to the collapse of the city’s levee system. Of course, the population of those victims were largely elderly and poor. Many couldn’t evacuate for one reason or the other are were too tied to their property to do so.

The Mississippi death toll came mostly from storm surge. Some of the victims had rode out the previous killer hurricane Camille and believed if they made it through Camille, they’d make it through this storm. Some did but others didn’t.

I learned a little about hurricanes having gone through those storms. For Rita I evacuated about 60 miles northeast of Beaumont, where I lived, and experienced probably the same amount of wind and rain as had I stayed home. I learned a little more about humanity from those storms as well. Each storm and having written about them gave me a little increased knowledge about hurricanes.

These days I don’t profess to be a hurricane expert. While those storms can be kind of a rush, I still would prefer to read about them than to go through them. As for this little storm off our coast, it will do what it does. It will probably rain an inch or two, which is added to what feels like a ton of rain we have already had this year.

The weather people on TV said the National Weather Service has yet to declare tropical depression or tropical storm warnings for what would be the named storm “Bill” is that the storm is basically not wrapped tight enough. That’s what I get at least. The National Hurricane Center says the storm has a 90 percent chance that it will be a named storm before it comes ashore within the next 12-24 hours. That is despite the storm has maximum sustained winds of 45 mph. That is already the speed for a Tropical Storm.

We all learn as we go, right?