Surge Protection

 It is interesting to me that the midterm elections coincided with the hurricane season. Discussion currently centers on the storm we call "Nicole." Forgive me if my understanding of pronouns and storms is lacking, but this one has a lot of attention. He/she/they/it have been both disregarded and elevated by forecasters. He/she/they/it has not packed the punch of Ian, but it would be hard to imagine another hurricane hitting with the same power that crushed the coast of Florida at the end of September this year. One hundred forty-seven people died in that one. Property damage estimates were in the tens of billions of dollars. Ian was a Category Four Hurricane. Nicole isn't expected to get much past a One. 

But Nicole is still a hurricane, and any additional catastrophe will be piled on top of that which already exists in the Sunshine State. That last bit was tossed in as ironic counterpoint, in case you were wondering. I am guessing that Floridians would not want to promote their home with license plate bearing the nickname, "Mostly underwater." And yet they persist. The stories tend to center on those hearty souls who nail a bunch of plywood onto their estates and hunker down, waiting for the storm to pass. The ones that flee tend to come back, only to look out to the sea in anticipation of the next meteorological event. 

Which is pretty much how I have been viewing the 2022 Midterm Elections. All reports in advance of the event had me wincing in fear of a Red Wave. The one that would cover the entire continent and bring about the end of Democracy. 

Certainly the initial reports from Florida announcing Ron "Don't Call Me Ronald" DeSantis and Marco "Don't Call Me" Rubio as winners of the governor's and senate races just shortly after the polls closed down in Hurricane Alley. This was not the news for which those of us who live in Blue Enclaves had hoped. 

I tried not to stare at the results coming in from across the country. Would the Magats make landfall and wash all evidence of the 2020 election? Marjorie Taylor Greene was reelected. Not a good sign. Lauren Boebert lost. As the night wore on, it became clear that the Category Four storm had been downgraded to more of a severe thunderstorm. The complaining about the political climate continued, but the system of elections held. When the clouds parted, the land was still recognizable, with patches of blue and red, very much like it had been the night before. 

And somewhere around the time the polls closed on the West Coast, it hailed in Oakland. Make of that what you will. Now onto predicting the next hurricane.