“Listen, Harvey, it’s your turn to ‘hunker down’. The Saturday night Astros game with the Angels is only a little more than an hour away.”
The reason we don’t have a great thesaurus for hurricane-speak is probably tied to the fact that everyone seems to understand the simple terms we now use without harbering great fear that to see them used twice in the same spoken or written paragraph of thought will be tantamount to sloppy, hackneyed expression.
For example:
Every impending hurricane starts with two choices for the residents in its path: either “Hunker Down” or “Get Out of Dodge”.
What could be clearer? Well, other than how strong is the storm? how fast is it moving? where is it projected to land? will you be on the dirty eastern side of the storm if you stay put? is your property on a flood plain? how close to the ocean are you? do you have a car full of gas and a house full of non-perishable supplies and a clear understanding of what those supplies need to include? got flashlights with batteries and first aid supplies, for example? do you still have time to leave or will you just be stuck in a panicking traffic jam on the highway, if you leave now? Stuff like that. And don’t forget the danger of tornadoes that often spawn as the barometric manifestations of the unstable atmosphere created by the presence of a landing hurricane and its powerful swirls of air and water.
Interesting. We just wrote the previous paragraph without once using either “hunker down” or “get out of dodge”. The perils of either seem to be obvious – in other words.
At 7:10 PM, Saturday, we are still under a tornado watch on the west Houston I-10 corridor and it is again raining hard, but the drift we are picking up from the local Channel 2 News is that Harvey has weakened more than expected coming inland and may not have the power to do that loop that will make the rain situation in Houston as bad as it was predicted to be.
But please don’t take my word as your weather cast. Pay attention to the Weather Channel and the other weather pros.
As for the rest of the “hunkering down” experience, we’re good. Hunkering down at home is a life style for some of us who have grown long of tooth. That means I’ve gotten in a nice nap this afternoon in preparation for the 9:00 PM AT&T Sports.net telecast of the Astros game in Anaheim versus the Angels.
If the power stays on and the creek doesn’t rise, it’ll still be “baseball tonight”.
********************
Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle
The Pecan Park Eagle 
August 27, 2017 at 12:46 am |
Stay safe, Bill
August 27, 2017 at 1:14 pm |
Has anyone ever “hunkered up”?
August 27, 2017 at 4:00 pm |
You’re incredible, Dr. Bill- you could be paid a lot of money for your knowledge of the English language! We’re still hunkered down – and experiencing slight ‘cabin fever.’ ;-]