Well, here I am preparing for my first ever hurricane, not something I’m particularly enjoying. As I type this Wednesday, schools have been closed for Thursday and Friday, most grocery stores are out of water, gas stations are out of gas, and people are generally freaking out (as am I). Luckily, we filled up our gas tank Sunday, before hysteria set in and the gas lines grew to hour long waits.

Hurricane Matthew is the first major hurricane to hit Miami in about 11 years and has been categorized as a category 4. I’m new to all this, but their are only 5 categories, so yeaaaaa.

Yesterday, we went to Costco to load up on cases of water (we got one of their last), non perishable food items, flash lights, and tons of batteries. Literally every grocery store was packed yesterday, I’ve never seen so many people outside of Costco, they didn’t have a single cart lined up out front. We had to scavenger through the parking lot to find one that someone had left!

Now that we are home and prepared, I’m feeling a little better about the situation but still somewhat uneasy. We don’t have hurricane shutters which some people say are necessary while others say they’re a waste of money unless  you’re a home owner and planning to withstand multiple hurricanes. So I’m not really sure which way to swing on that one. Currently we are planning on holding out on the shutters this time around, as no-one else in our neighborhood has shutters up.

We have also packed a suitcase for the two of us and one for our cat just in case we do have to evacuate- as of now, our county does not have an evacuation warning, but others surrounding us have ordered evacuations. All the important paperwork, passports, insurance, pet vaccinations, etc have been packed as well! So I’m feeling good about that, I think we have majority of the bases covered.

Currently, as of 5 pm, there are reports that guarantee power outages across Miami, so we will continue to have all electronics fully charged, especially our cell phones.

I will let you all know once the storm passes how we weathered the storm! Fingers crossed it isn’t as bad as the local news is making it seem!

xoxo,

Amanda

UPDATE

It is now Friday, Oct 7th, and we have officially survived our first hurricane!

Thank you to everyone for the kind thoughts and prayers sent my way! Luckily, yesterday wasn’t too bad and definitely not as bad as was expected. Sometime around 3 pm Matthew ended up veering to the right and rather than come directly toward Miami, stayed off coast and continued upward. We had a ton of wind and crazy rain but were lucky enough to maintain power (a few surrounding neighborhoods around us actually lost power, hopefully they have it back now!) There wasn’t a minute of sunshine yesterday, very dark and very gloomy but this morning, after a loud night of wind, we woke up to sunshine!

There are some remaining clouds and of course still windy but I would say for the most part, it is very calm our way. Which makes me very happy! This morning, as a city, we were officially taken of “Hurricane Watch” and everything that was expected to be closed, actually opened today at 8 am. Miami International Airport also began rescheduling flights  for later today.

I feel so relieved that the bulk of Hurricane Matthew missed us, but feel so much remorse and sadness for the devastation it brought to Haiti, Cuba, and the Bahamas. With that, I also hope the rest of northern Florida has listened to evacuation warnings and left their homes up north, as the storm is now heading straight for them.  I hope and pray everyone who is going to meet Matthew in the coming days, stays safe!