Hurricane opal7/25/2023 ![]() At times it screamed like a murder victim. the wind got down to the business of dismantling everything that had been built over the years. We stayed, and hoped, and prayed.Īt 3:30 p.m. Some of us knew there would be no escape, and a kind of fatalistic resignation took over. the roads north were jammed with frightened people trying to flee. advisory brought worse news: Opal's winds had risen to 150 mph.Ī quick mental picture: the fields of destruction left by Hurricane Andrew in South Florida.īy 8:30 a.m. Overnight, Opal had pushed its winds to 135 mph and was marching to the northeast - right at Northwest Florida. It was what we'd been told to fear: a strengthening hurricane bearing down on an unsuspecting coastline. Rain beat from a gun-metal sky in gusting sheets that drenched everything - police cars that drove slowly through coastal neighborhoods, their bullhorns shouting at sleepy residents to get out lines of jittery drivers at gas stations filling their tanks for a hasty trip north harried shoppers racing across grocery store parking lots with carts of water, ice, and batteries. That answer would not become apparent - frighteningly so - until early Wednesday. ![]() Unsettling, yes, but better than the first night, with the sound of the gale scraping across the roof like falling gravel, or the night before, with rain pummeling Northwest Florida and the urgent blare of televisions everywhere as people waited for an answer to the only question that mattered: Sirens hooted all across town, and in some places gunshots split the night. Helicopters thundered overhead, shuttling back and forth from Okaloosa Island on errands that foretold some complication to the disaster that had been wrought there. A gentle north breeze had wrung the heat and sweat from the air, and it blew through the windows with the calm assurance that everything would be OK.īecause on the second night, we slept with the windows open, too, and the outside world did not sound so friendly. It was, as they say, a good night for sleeping. On the third night, we slept with the windows open. 11, 1995, one week after Hurricane Opal battered the Panhandle with high winds and destructive floods: ![]() The following column was written by Daily News Columnist Del Stone Jr. ![]()
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