Sunshine and Flowers

Sunshine and Flowers

People associate Florida with sunny days and balmy breezes, assortments of beautiful flowers, tropical plants, tall palm trees, and hurricanes.  Living in Florida for over 5 years, I have never experienced a major hurricane. I have never seen an alligator either, but that’s a story for another day.  Last Sunday proved to be quite exciting in Cocoa Beach.

It started out as a beautiful hot sunny day with weather reports calling for afternoon thunderstorms, much like most summer days here.  Nine times out ten, the Cocoa Beach area doesn’t get the predicted storms; they simply seem to pass us by.  I set out to the gazebo to write and listen to my newly installed police scanner radio app on my iPod.  As soon as I tuned into the Brevard County, Cocoa Beach Police and Fire channel, I heard police and dispatch exchanging information about a tornado that had been spotted off the beach in Cocoa Beach. They effectively started evacuating the beaches from Cocoa Beach down to Indialantic Beach, which is a few miles down the road.  People were leaving the beach when the Life Guards called order to the beach as people came out of the water.  The police and dispatch reported throngs of beach goers crowding into downtown Cocoa Beach as they headed for safer areas.

Always excited for a good storm, I decided to stay outside, under the gazebo, in my back yard. I saw the sky darkening, the wind blowing like crazy and it started raining, with raindrops the size of half dollars.  Living only a block and a half from the beach, and across the street from the Banana River, I worried as I listened to the quick conversations between the Cocoa Beach dispatcher and various police units responding to make sure our residents were heading to safer areas. I realized this is a real threat, and went inside momentarily to let my family know what was going on.  As soon as I made my way inside, I looked out my front and side windows to see the Banana River churning up.  It looked as if I was looking at the ocean, with huge white caps, and the wind swirling the palm trees nearby, tossing small branches to the neighbors’ roof.  We quickly turned on our emergency radio, yes, the one that was tucked away since we moved here last summer.  Was this real?  Would we, could we really have a tornado in Cocoa Beach? 

We turned on Channel 13 news on the television, just in time to see the video of the darkest, blackest clouds I have ever seen, and right in the center was this massive area where it seemed as if the dark cloud was touching the water.  Now, I’ve seen videos of tornadoes before, I watch Storm Chasers after all, but I had never seen something like this.  It didn’t appear to have a spout; it was just this huge wedge of dark cloud!  Not knowing if that was a good or bad thing, it did look ominous,  we went outside to gather up things in the yard that could possible fly and damage windows.  The wind howled into the living room, through the chimney as I stood at the door way, watching some our pool toys fly into the pool.  As quickly at it started, within less than half an hour, it was over. The winds died down, the heavy rain subsided, the sun was out once again, and the flowers and palm trees, glistened with rain.  After all, this is a Florida sunshine and flowers day.

LinFer (Linda Fernandes) 2012 ©





© 2012 Linda Fernandes