And Yet Another Winter Coastal Storm

So hear I sit. My home is warm and dry. It's nestled in pine and live and pin oak trees beside a small canal. It is the same canal dug many years ago as a means of floating by barge the granite slabs used to build the Wright Brothers Memorial very close by. Our home is 1 mile by street to the Kill Devil Hills, First Street beach access.

Another winter collision is about to occur between a coastal low pressure system crawling northward up the coast and arctic air sweeping in from the northwest tomorrow night. We may get snow or sleet or rain. Who knows? We are sure to get wind though---and, as usual, plenty of it.

We can count on our home of 21 years keeping us warm and dry once again. We are grateful for it. This is the home we were going to live in for only 5 years and then build on another lot we have in Southern Shores. But our youngest child was born in it and no one in our family wanted to move from it after Jack came along. It has become a sort of sacred family site. So here we are.

The shed out back has a rack full of window storm shutters I custom built for every window on the house. One of the shutters for one of our front windows has a list of every hurricane our home has been shuttered for. The list includes infamous names, among others, Emily, Fran, Bertha, Floyd, and Isabel. Many unnamed storms never made the shutter including several unnamed northeasters which have blown in excess of the 75 mile-an-hour threshold hurricane force wind, the 1993 "Storm of the Century", the "October Storm", which produced the "Perfect Storm" off the northeast coast of the United States and the largest surf I've ever witnessed on this coast having lived here virtually my whole life. Countless unnamed storms rake this part of the coast regularly, usually going unheralded by the now very fashionable storm-chasing media. They are part of routine living on the Outer Banks.

March is now on the doorstep. The ocean water is 43 degrees. The month of "Maypril" is on the near horizon with it's playful torture of our expectations for coming good weather, and another storm is brewing. I suppose I'll spend some time on the trainer tomorrow and duck another messy winter day.