The storm that came ashore smaller

One · What happened

Forty-five miles an hour on Monday, a hundred and fifty on Tuesday

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center called Polo’s growth in a single day remarkable. A tropical storm with winds of forty-five miles an hour on the morning of 21 September had winds of a hundred and fifty about the same hour the next day. NOAA’s satellite office counted a gain of ninety-five knots in twenty-four hours, the third fastest on record for the eastern Pacific, along with an eighty-eight millibar drop in central pressure that ranks second. On 22 September the winds peaked at a hundred and eighty miles an hour, the third Category 5 of the season in that ocean.

NBC News reported Polo’s winds at a hundred and ten miles an hour as it struck Baja California Sur. The landfall came on Tuesday, 29 September, as a Category 2 storm, well down from its peak. By the time the system crossed the Gulf of California it had weakened further, to a tropical storm with no hurricane winds left. Hundreds who had sheltered on the peninsula were expected to go home. The rain got farther than the wind did. Three New Mexico communities were evacuated over the chance of a dam failing, among them Rincon, Salem and Garfield. Evacuation orders followed in Hatch and Placitas. Three people were pulled out of Heaps Canyon near Zion National Park after flash flooding. A driver north of Phoenix got out of a truck that had been swept down a wash.

Two · What it is doing

What you tell yourself on Wednesday

Ahead of the storm you moved the car off the low street and carried the photo albums upstairs. The water never reached your house. Now a sentence turns up in your head about getting worked up over nothing. The figures seem to back it, since Polo lost seventy miles an hour between its peak and the coast of Baja California Sur. Set a hundred and eighty beside a hundred and ten and the first number looks like hype. Carter Greulich, a National Weather Service meteorologist, told people to stay out of the arroyos.

“Overhyped” is the word you reach for if you stayed put and the rain missed your town. You enjoy being right more than you should. The people who loaded their trucks look a little jumpy now, and you can hear yourself saying so at work. You and the man with the albums upstairs have both settled on one rule for warnings. A warning counts only when the worst case arrives. Each of you will carry the rule into the next warning, the careful man by waiting longer before he moves and the other by feeling sure of himself again. A lump or a letter from the bank will test that rule sooner than another hurricane will.

Three · Where the ground is

Warned about a flood nobody had seen

“Being warned by God concerning events as yet unseen,” Hebrews 11:7 says of Noah, “in reverent fear constructed an ark for the saving of his household.” Noah was building for a flood that nobody had yet seen. The text calls that faith and gives his household as the reason. Since God spoke to Noah directly, nobody should hold a National Hurricane Center advisory to the standard of that warning. The same posture, acting on a danger before it arrives, carries over to a family looking at a map. Proverbs 22:3 puts it in a line anyone can memorize, “The prudent sees danger and hides himself, but the simple go on and suffer for it.”

Some people told Jesus about Galileans whom Pilate had killed. He answered by asking about a disaster of His own, “those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them.” He wanted to know if they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem (Luke 13:4). His answer to His own question was, “No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (Luke 13:5). The eighteen under the tower ranked no lower than the people across the street. The family in a wash north of Phoenix stands in the same place before God as the family two states from any water.

Asleep in the stern

“Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” the disciples ask when they wake Jesus in the stern of a boat that a storm is filling. Peter, Andrew, James and John had worked that lake as fishermen (Mark 1:16–20) and knew its weather. They were afraid anyway. Jesus rebuked the wind, and “there was a great calm” (Mark 4:39). The men asked one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” Neither Mark nor any other writer in Scripture explains why one storm weakens before it lands and another arrives at full strength. Nobody has the right to say what God was doing with Polo, and a man who supplies a reason for a family’s flooded kitchen has joined Job’s friends.

Romans 8:38–39 promises that nothing in all creation will be able “to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.” The verse makes no promise about the house staying dry. Paul calls Christ’s death for sinners, and His rising on the third day, a matter of first importance, “that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures” (1 Corinthians 15:3). The One who slept in that stern went to the cross for sinners, those fishermen included. A congregation in the path of the rain has members who left on Monday and members who stayed. Both groups sit in the same pew on Sunday.

Four · Today

Five things, and none of them are “stay informed”

By the weekend Polo will be off the front pages. The warning with your name on it may already be sitting unopened on the kitchen table.

1. 01

   Settle where the household goes when the water rises.

   Pick the high ground tonight, either a relative’s house or the church building. Tell everyone who lives with you, the children included. Write the route on a card for the glove box and agree on who calls whom. The prudent man in Proverbs 22:3 sees danger and takes cover, and a plan made on a dry evening is the ordinary way to do it.

2. 02

   Open the warning you have been setting aside.

   Most houses have one by now, usually a recall notice or a doctor’s call that nobody returned. Choose the one you feel surest will turn out to be nothing, then deal with it this week by making the phone call or opening the envelope. A symptom gets its verdict from the exam, and the exam only happens once somebody makes the call.

3. 03

   Call back anybody you laughed at.

   Pick one person you joked with about Polo being overhyped, or about the people who left looking jumpy, then tell him you were wrong. Luke 13:4 has Jesus asking if the eighteen killed when the tower fell were worse offenders than anyone else in Jerusalem. The question leaves no room for ranking people by how they handled a warning. Ask God to forgive the contempt before you dial.

4. 04

   Read the boat story to your family.

   Mark 4:35–41 takes about two minutes to read at the table. Ask each person, the youngest first, what he would have said to Jesus in the stern, and give the answers as long as they need. The disciples asked Him outright if He cared that they were perishing. The children are allowed to ask the same.

5. 05

   Send help toward the water through a church.

   Ask your pastor if the congregation knows a church in Baja California Sur, Sonora or the flooded stretch of New Mexico. Send money to that church to hand out. People in a congregation there know which families lost the car or the floor. If your own church has no such tie, use the relief fund it already trusts.