5 AM Hurricane Idalia Update
Lesson 25: Staying dry outside the eye
Ken here, posting for Keke this morning as she has returned to bed.
It’s 3:30 AM on August 30, 2023. Keke starts crying. It’s early for her first wake-up to go outside, but she’s probably hearing the wind whipping outside like I am. I’ve listened to the wind and rain hitting the windows off and on tonight. Hurricane Idalia is forecast to make landfall in northwest Florida later this morning, but we live considerably to the east. We are on the outer bands.
I get up and take Keke out of her crate, don my raincoat, and step into the unknown.
It’s not raining. The wind is gusty but probably less than 30 mph. I put Keke down and don’t bother to zip my coat.
Our automated sprinkler system runs a couple of times a week in the middle of the night. In the two months since we adopted Keke, the sprinklers have never been going when I got up at nighttime to take her out. Tonight, they are on.
The sprinklers are happily spraying, but as long as we stay on the walkway, we should remain dry except when the occasional wind gust blows the spray at us.
In the two months I’ve been taking Keke out in the middle of the night, she has never chosen to pee on the lawn. She does her business on the cement walkway, sniffs to see if any intruders have visited her turf overnight, and then turns to go back inside.
Tonight, she jumps onto the grass. She walks a fifteen-foot-long semi-circular arc, oblivious to the sprinkler drenching her. Toward the end of the turn, she stops, pees, then jumps back onto the walkway. A drowned rat. She shakes, then continues up the walkway, sniffing at the garden plants like it’s a beautiful sunny day.
A strong gust of wind arises, and the sprinkler spray hits me. I should have zipped up my raincoat.
Keke finally decides it’s time to go back inside. I’m a little wet, but she is soaked to the bone and starts to shiver. I grab a towel, chase her down, and carry her into the bathroom. I sit on the floor and try to dry her off, but she’s fighting me. I grab the hair dryer and put it on the low setting. I keep it moving rapidly, holding it several inches from Keke’s body. She hates the hair dryer, but after a minute, she relaxes and decides it feels pretty good. After five or ten minutes, she’s mostly dry and no longer shivering. I take her back to bed with me.
When we got her, we bought a small pink doggy tee shirt for Keke—pajamas, you could say. We got the smallest size they make, but it fit her like an oversized potato sack. The one time I put it on her, she was out of it in two minutes. I get the tee shirt tonight, and she’s grown into it. A little loose, but a decent fit.
After ten minutes of chewing at the tee shirt, she’s wriggled two paws out of it. I put the two paws back in and put her to bed.
I can’t sleep, so I get up, hungry for information about the storm. The live update says Idalia is heading for Florida’s “big bend,” where it is expected to make landfall as a Category 3, or possibly 4, in the next couple of hours, bringing storm surges of 12 to 16 feet and winds of 130 mph.
I wonder where in the world is Jim Cantore?
Cantore’s last post on Twitter was eleven hours ago, reporting from Cedar Key. From a live update I heard a half hour ago, the reporter was pleading for everyone on Cedar Key to evacuate, as the storm surge is predicted to cut the island off from the mainland.
We are fortunate to be out of the path of this storm. I hope everyone near it, including Jim, will follow local advisories and stay safe as much as possible. This is a big one.