An Apology to Florida, But Not to Palm Beach

As a longtime resident of the Hamptons, I’d like to apologize to the people of Florida for what’s happened in recent years. Weather patterns have shifted. And the many huge hurricanes that for years clobbered the Hamptons now clobber Florida. What have we done?

I am surprised that no one has offered an apology before. It may be because people who were born after 2000 think that hurricanes never hit the Hamptons. Even Sandy, a powerful blow in 2012, weakened from a category 1 hurricane to a tropical storm before making landfall in New Jersey.

But if you were born a generation ago, or particularly two generations ago, you will recall huge hurricanes as a way of life in the Hamptons. As I noted in this newspaper when I started Dan’s Papers in 1960, the Hamptons is the only place in America that sticks out from the mainland east to west so hurricanes with incredible frequency could charge up the Atlantic Ocean from the south to hit us like a baseball hitting a bat.

Bang! Hurricane Carol smashed into Montauk on Aug, 30,1954 knocking down trees and homes while creating a flood that isolated that town for several days. Hurricane Hazel gusted winds of 113 miles an hour into Manhattan on Oct. 15, 1954. Hurricane Connie dropped more than 10 inches of rain as it came through on Aug. 12, 1955.

Just four years later, Hurricane Donna caused huge winds, a downpour and a 6-foot rise in ocean tides in September 1960. Then Hurricane Alma came charging through on June 9, 1966. In 1976, more than 30,000 people fled upstate from Long Island as Hurricane Belle, roaring up the coast, came to hit the East End.  And it went on and on.

Businesses on Main Streets in the Hamptons boarded up their show windows with plywood in anticipation of hurricanes. Homeowners did too. Expecting a hurricane as it zipped past Georgia, the Outer Banks and Atlantic City was part of our lives. You could track it on television when there was power, and then on portable radios thereafter. Only a few people could afford auxiliary power generators back then.

I remember those days with a certain fondness. For instance, I have a wonderful memory of the August 1976 Hurricane Belle. Myself and about 10 friends spent three days in East Hampton without electricity in a house on Egypt Lane owned by Esther Gentle, the wife of abstract expressionist painter Abraham Rattner. She wasn’t there but it was said she knew we were there and it was okay. When it was over we walked up to Main Street where several giant oaks had fallen onto the Huntting Inn.

So why today is this not happening here? Hurricanes form off the coast of Africa, then glide west across the Atlantic toward Florida, where, instead of deciding to charge north and hit the Hamptons, they loop around the southern tip of Florida, pick up energy in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico and then, in full fury, strike a vicious blow at cities and towns along the shore. Huge damage takes place in New Orleans, Tallahassee, Tampa and in most recent times the second-home winter communities on the West Coast of Florida, causing all that devastation.

One of them, Hurricane Milton, even cut a path across Florida, hitting small towns along the way to finally emerge, exhausted, into the Atlantic just north of Cape Canaveral.

By the way, this apology does not extend to Palm Beach, which has been spared these recent hurricanes. Palm Beach sits on the Atlantic as we do, safe from the carnage in the gulf. It seems that Palm Beach, has gotten some sort of golden pass in recent years.

Also to be apologized for is the official duration of hurricane season. In 1965, the National Hurricane Service defined the Atlantic Hurricane Season as running six months from June 1 to Nov. 30. In 1991 when all the tents got flattened at the Hampton Classic Horse Show, the deed was done just before the horse show began on Labor Day weekend. We thought we’d turned the corner. But we hadn’t. (Amazingly, after Bob passed through, for it was Bob that did that, all the tents got put back up in time to hold the show. Yay, us.)

If you think I’m exaggerating this situation, here are some statistics I have gathered up from the weather bureau this past week.

In the period from 1950 to 2000, there were 12 powerful storms that hit the bat that is the Hamptons. From 2000 to the present day, there have been just two; the last, Sandy, was 12 years ago.

But this is not to say that the Hamptons are now in the clear. Since 2000, we’ve experienced  earthquakes and tornadoes — disasters rarely seen in the Hamptons before. One of them, a tornado I experienced myself — although the weather bureau insists it was just a waterspout — came down across Long Island Sound around 1991, blew off the roof of the East Hampton Marina on Three Mile Harbor where I live, tore down the chimney of my home, and caused a huge tree house in a tall oak behind our house to be blown away. After that, it lifted up and came down again along Main Street in Bridgehampton where it knocked down trees and collapsed a part of Thayer’s Hardware store before lifting up and going off.

As for earthquakes, we’ve all felt the shaking when they happen. A new experience. No serious damage though. Yet.

And now, the authorities have declared that we’re in a drought. And we’ve had wildfires. It is taking place, I believe, because when Milton barreled across the waist of Florida, it came back inland, headed north and then dropped tons of rain on western North Carolina to cause mudslides, flooding and home collapses before once again petering out to sea.

It’s hardly rained in the Hamptons since August. And it is my belief that Milton’s unbelievable North Carolina downpour was intended to be our rain, now gone for who knows how long.

Buckle up.

Read more of Dan Rattiner’s stories.