The Cone of Uncertainty

Other than "hunker down," I don't know of another term newscasters and meteorologist have used during the hurricane season that I appreciate more than "the cone of uncertainty." It sounds like some kind of sci-fi device with lots of wires and flashing lights that you would wear over your head while strapped to a chair with steel bands -- something designed by theological liberals to remove your fundamentalist thinking, perhaps. Basically, it is a term to describe the future. The further we attempt to look into the future, the less we are certain about. Duh. It means, "we don't really know, but we are venturing a guess."

It was just three years ago that I sat in a Lazyboy rocker at my grandmother’s farm as an evacuee, watching a San Antonio weather crew do their best to report on the approach of Hurricane Rita. I recall being both nervous and calm at the same time, if that is possible. The nervousness resulted from watching the approach of a Cat 5 storm, bearing down on I-45, heading for my neighborhood. Ironically, the calmness came from the realization that this was potentially so catastrophic that I could do absolutely nothing about it and that one way or another we would be ok.

I was born in downtown Houston and have spent all but four of my nearly fifty-six years here. Hurricane season comes around like the baseball, football, and ragweed seasons. In 1961, as a nine year old, I rode out Hurricane Carla with my parents, an aunt, and a cousin in our home six miles north of downtown. Carla made landfall on September 11 as a Category 4 storm and did $2 billion worth of damage (2005 dollars). School had just started and I was playing sandlot football down the street from my house on Friday afternoon. The discussion among my friends was about evacuation. Mike Schaeffer and his family were headed for Arkansas. I didn’t even know a storm was coming.

The family hunkered down for the blast. My dad spread some sleeping bags on the living room floor for him and me, so that my aunt and cousin could have a bed. Sam, our temperamental Siamese cat, choose my dad’s bag to use as a litter box. My dad was not a cat person. (That’s like saying Carla was a storm.) I recall Sam flying out the front door, wide-eyed, screaming, legs askew, into the elements and hearing my dad, who was not prone to profanity, say, “Damn, Sam.” Sam survived the storm, finding a better place to hunker.

In 1980 Hurricane Allen filled the Gulf, a Category 5 storm that at one time had winds of 190 mph. Galveston Island was evacuated. I drove down to the Exxon station to fill up our car in case we had to leave. Cars extended bumper-to-bumper on I-45 as far as I could see in either direction. We were living in the Heights, not far from where I had experienced Carla years before. As it turned out, Allen calmed down to a Category 3 before landfall and graciously chose to come ashore at a less populated area in south Texas.

Three years later, Hurricane Alicia, a low Category 3, visited us. We were still living in the Heights area and had two young sons. Melinda and I stayed up through the night monitoring the storm on television as long as we had power, and then on the radio. I watched through our front window as the huge pecan tree across the street bowed low and resurrected in the wind over and over, until one time it failed to rise to face the storm again. Damage was pretty severe in our neighborhood, fifty-five miles away from the coast. We rescued a baby squirrel the next morning, named him Squeaky, and sweated out a humid Houston August without power for a week following.

Now the season is here again. I watch the storms line up in the North Atlantic like Southwest Airline flights approaching Hobby and listen to Dr. Neil call the roll. We are now only twenty-nine miles from the Galveston coast and seven miles from Galveston Bay, so I pay attention during the season. We’re up to Ike, storm number nine.

Who knows where he will go? But today the center of the cone of uncertainty is pretty close to Galveston, Texas. He’s expected to be another Category 3 (Alicia or better). He’ll be in the Gulf of Mexico by 2:00 PM on Wednesday and off our coast by 2:00 PM on Friday. Unless he decides to go elsewhere. Hence the cone of uncertainty.