One of my favorite sayings is, “If you want to make God laugh, say, ‘I have a plan.’”
I’m sure the big guy has been chortling away this week. Virtually none of my plans have come to fruition, and it’s all because of one pesky little tropical storm.
Monday I was supposed to drive to Devine, Texas, for a field trip. Ascend Geo, a geophysical manufacturing company that makes wireless land seismic systems, was displaying its wares in, well, basically, the middle of nowhere. I was full of anticipation, despite the fact that it was likely to be extremely hot and humid and there would, in all likelihood, be fire ants everywhere. I was going to take my camera and my notebook and be ready to go with a “web exclusive” article.
Seemingly out of nowhere, Edouard reared its ugly head and made a beeline for Houston. While I probably could have made it to Devine without incident, I was a little concerned about making it back. Residents who have lived here longer then me were comparing this storm to Alicia, which wreaked havoc on the city in 1983. It seemed prudent to cancel the trip, stay home, and be sure my family was safe.
Tuesday, the day I would have been driving back to Houston, I was in fact home watching the deluge because our office was closed. At one point I turned on the Weather Channel, which was showing our “local radar.” It looked like southeast Texas was being eaten by a giant green monster.
Despite the Alicia comparisons, the storm caused very little damage. A few people lost power for awhile, but, as the Houston Chronicle pointed out, the storm “politely skirted the region’s most populous areas.” The US Minerals Management Service reported that 154 production platforms and nine rigs in the Gulf of Mexico were evacuated and that 6% of the oil production and 12.3% of the natural gas production were shut in due to the storm.
So we’re trying to regain our sense of normalcy and remember what it was we’d planned to accomplish this week. And hopefully we’ll get it done before the next tropical disturbance enters the Gulf.
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