“They saw other people like themselves struggling along. A house down, here and there, frightened cattle. But above all the drive of the wind and the water. And the lake. Under its multiplied roar could be heard a mighty sound of grinding rock and timber and a wail… The monstopolous beast had left his bed. The two hundred miles an hour wind had loosed his chains. He seized hold of his dikes and ran forward until he met the quarters; uprooted them like grass and rushed on after his supposed-to-be conquerors, rolling the dikes, rolling the houses, rolling the people in the houses along with other timbers. The sea was walking the earth with a heavy heel.” (p. 161-2)

As folks who have been through a hurricane can tell you, it’s not the wind that you have to worry about - it’s the water. Not the water that falls from the sky, though that’s bad enough, but the water that rushes onto land from the sea, the rivers, and the lakes. It’s called a storm surge, and you can get an inkling of its inexorable, indiscriminately destructive force in this short video. Sure, the howling wind is horrifying to hear, but wait for the water at 1:45 mark and watch it wreak havoc...

However, that doesn’t mean you should overlook the wind and the rain, especially if you don’t know that it’s coming. These days we have radar and storm-chasing planes and the Weather Channel, but back in 1926, when the Great Miami Hurricane hit Florida and the rain just didn’t stop, people had no idea what they were up against, just like the folks down on the muck in 1928 for the Okeechobee Hurricane, folks like Janie and Tea Cake, who faced a much, much deadlier storm

Try to find a way to express the awesome power of a hurricane. Draw, write, sculpt, dance, make music…