Chris WiegmanFor most of my life I’ve gotten nervous around June as hurricane season started. The first one I really remember was Hurricane Opal in the 90s that really trashed my family’s place in Panama City and they’ve made me nervous ever since.
Thankfully for much of that time most of my info on the storms was what I found on TV. The Weather Channel and local news were the major sources of storm information and live radar and forecasts on the web weren’t all that great.
Since we moved to Florida in 2015 my anxiety had gotten a lot worse and was compounded by so much more forecast and other information being available on the internet.
Fortunately nothing ever did any damage but, in the 9 years we lived in Sarasota, we did have to evacuate twice.
Put it all together and my storm anxiety would normally start about now and carry into November. For the last few years I think it is safe to say I watched every single GFS forecast run as it came out and all of it was eating me alive.
This year, while I have plenty of other things to be anxious about, hurricane season is not part of it. Chicago may get some storms in the spring but that never was something that particularly worried me and for all of this I am so very, very grateful.