For those of you who don’t know, this is where I live. Right on Mobile Bay, which feeds into the Gulf of Mexico just a couple of miles away, I was born and raised. Our climate is particularly warm and humid all year, and I’ve heard we get more rain than Seattle.

When most of the country was getting snow days in school, I’d be getting by with a light sweater and some tights. In fact, the last snow day I had was in 1997, and the snow never even stuck to the ground. Nonetheless, our principal, Sister Maureen (totally Catholic, right?) sent our fourth grade butts home. It hasn’t snowed one flake since.

So, what fun did we have to look forward to if the possibility of missing school for snow was out? Hurricanes. I loved my hurricane days (even if it was required to make them up at the end of the year). See, a lot of my northern acquaintences think hurricanes are terrifying, but they’ve been pretty much friends of mine. I sleep better with rain, school and work get cancelled, and we get to be all over the news.

I vividly remember tracking Hurricane Erin in our third grade class. We plugged in our coordinates and played connect-the-dots. It didn’t seem morbid at all, even though Erin did hit us. Well, it hit Pensacola, Florida — about 40 minutes away — but the left side of the direct hit is usually pretty bad due to the wind direction. (Am I right, Rob?) 

Well, we’ve got another darling heading our way. Ida, which is a tiny baby, is hitting as we speak. School’s cancelled through Wednesday, which means no art for me to teach this week.

Watch for Gulf Shores and Mobile on the news! Maybe Fairhope will make another appearance. The last time they showed us was during Gustav and Faye last year. We also made a few cameos with Ivan and Katrina this decade.