Why Arkansas gets so much rain :: Memories of Andrew

The latest report on Hurricane Dennis shows, at the bottom of the page, a small graphic of the track and potential track of the tropical storm that was once Hurricane Dennis.

The little dotted red line goes right over my hometown, Jonesboro AR.

Oh, it won't be a raging storm by the time it gets that far inland, only copious amounts of rain. As usual.

The closest thing I have to experience with a hurricane was Andrew (1992). Hundreds or maybe thousands of people from Louisiana and the Mississippi Gulf Coast came up through McComb, where I lived at the time, taking shelter from the storm with relatives, in churches, even in the high school gymnasium.

Andrew was a tropical storm by the time it hit us, and the only thing it did in our neighborhood was knock a tree down. The tree was on an island between two streets, with no houses on the actual island, but in every other direction. The apparently healthy tree was quite a large one, rotten on the inside, and exactly the same height as the length of the island. It fell the length of the long, narrow island. If it had fallen any other direction, it would have hit a house.

I was 14 at the time, and insane enough to go out in the storm when it hit us midafternoon. I was home from school, my parents weren't. It was quite a thrill to literally feel the power of that storm, and to realize that it had been severely weakened by the trip inland.

I came to understand in a small way how right those folks from Louisiana had been to come up north to us.