Who Went Through the Eye?

I think this was the first time I experienced the eye of a real hurricane.

I was 7 years old for Betsy and that was at night. I was kept inside.

There was that storm shortly before Katrina that was declared a hurricane after the fact. It passed right over my house, and we experienced what looked like the eye, but that was almost too minor to count.

I rode out Zeta at a house near the Kenner/Metairie line. From time to time I would go outside on well shielded front and back porches. As the eyewall approached, the rain was shooting sideways in torrents from east to west. Later on it was blasting from north to south. I between, there was a period where the winds were calm and the rain stopped to a drizzle. The skies above me were not clear blue like some in Metairie were reporting, but the clouds were light and thin and the sun was glowing through them.

The reporters on the weather channel sometimes compare war stories about the times they went through the eyes of hurricanes. Even with them, these experiences seem to be few and far between.

As a native New Orleanian, I can add this to my long list of hurricane stories.