Hurricane!

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The late September weather was crisp and clear outside my downtown office as a flurry of homeward bound office workers scurried for the Metro across Connecticut Avenue, eight floors below. Off in the distance I could hear the ever-present whine of sirens, normal background noise in Washington, just as the cloud-specked sky above was a seldom noticed constant in this city where the focus usually was on more mundane and immediate things.

The telephone rang just as I was pulling the file on the Severance drums and fries matter out of the cabinet. “Janice has turned north,” Jerry Nord’s voice on the other end said abruptly. “She’ll hit the gulf stream sometime in the next twenty-four hours.”

“What’s her status?” I asked, my heart starting to accelerate from the rush of adrenaline as the impact of his words hit me. “Has she been upgraded from a tropical depression again?” The three previous candidates had proven less to our liking, one turning toward the Georgia coast, the second dropping back to a tropical storm just as we were ready to launch, and the third swinging over Florida, with much attendant destruction. I wanted to be sure that this one wasn’t going to be a waste of time and effort as well. Janice had already changed status once as she shifted north.

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