Hurricane Season

And so hurricane season 2011 begins. A tornado clipped downtown Springfield, Massachusetts, USA, today, which seems a bit weird, but then 2011 has been a real weird one in many of its transgressions. One report stated that Springfield's last tornado occurred in 1954, a fitting segue for today's post, because Hurricane Hazel of 1954 is the first named cyclone I remember being recalled by eyewitnesses.

Now, visiting with my parents in the Tar Heel state, I asked them about the 1955 hurricane season and subsequent flooding of East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, where I "hail" from. Hurricanes Connie and Diane (whose names have since been retired because of their destructiveness, along with Hazel '54) hit one right after the other in August of '55. 

At the time, the greater family was scattered due to work and vacation schedules. My Mom was working as a Bell Telephone operator in Stroudsburg, my Dad was working at Vacation Valley and my paternal grandparents, aunts and then-baby sister Vickie were "Down to Shore." Everything in the region was disrupted by flooding. Fifty kids camping along Broadhead Creek drowned. My Mom was ferried by helipcopter to the telephone switching center, and everyone else was stranded where they were for quite a little while. The event was traumatic enough that people were still talking about it when I was a little kid in the 1960s; they still do more than half a century later.

The 2011 hurricane season may be another big one. We'll find out soon enough, I suppose, adding the new names to the historic roll call. As for systematic naming, it began in 1950; starting in 1979, female and male names were alternated. Hurricane Bob '79 was the first "sporting" the latter.   

Today's Rune: Protection. Original images source: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).