Member-only story
Is It Time to Rethink Where You Live Because of Climate Change?
For the first time, I’m considering moving
I’ve been reading a lot of apocalyptic fiction lately. Been living it too. Wind and water. Water and wind.
Earlier this week, Hurricane Beryl came through Houston as a Category 1. For the uninitiated, that is the ‘weakest’ hurricane. We woke up early Monday morning and watched 70+ MPH winds sweep down our street for 4-plus hours, praying that our neighbor’s 60-foot pine tree would stop shimmying toward our roof.
In late May, a derecho bearing 100 MPH winds came through the city. I didn’t know what a derecho was — I only knew that from when I got a phone alert about severe weather in the area, I had about 10 minutes to get home to my kids and get in the closet before our fence came up like an accordion. As I shut the door, lawn art passed by the window like a Texas rip-off of The Wizard of Oz.
After the derecho, it took a week before the lights came on at our house. The wind had shredded the electrical towers. This time, we got our power back after 7 days. Many of my neighbors and friends still don’t have it. The heat index last week was 100.
Understandably, Facebook is livid. There were posts about not seeing linemen in the area and the general under-preparedness of…
