Hurricane Barry

Oh Barry. The storm that never really was.

Hurricane Barry came through over the weekend of July 12-14. It was the first named storm of this season that affected Louisiana. People were very concerned about it, but we got more rain two days before than we did during an actual hurricane. Downtown businesses flooded badly; the city was a mess. Then we had to deal with more a couple days later. The memes and social media posts that came out of it were hilarious though. The Little Mermaid one was my favorite.

The biggest problem with Barry was the storm surge pushing up through an already very swollen Mississippi River. There was legitimate concern that the river would crest and overtop the levees. Even with the spillway being open for its longest period ever. Luckily, that did not come to pass. Barry was mostly a non-event.

Kenny and I took the boys up to the levee by the lake on Friday afternoon to check things out. They had a great time running around in the wind and rain, pushing their truck and lawnmower (with its' Kenny-engineered longer handle). There were quite a lot of whitecaps in the lake; the wind was blowing pretty strong. The water level was also past the rock barrier, which is unusual. But we saw a rainbow on our walk home!

Terah and Jake decided to host a hurricane party at their house on Friday night. They made homemade tamales, tomatillo salsa, and bean dip. Everything was so good.

The funniest part of the night was when all of the kids collectively decided that the dads needed spa treatments. Jake even cut up cucumber slices, which Riley had no idea what to do with. But he customized something special for his daddy: he made him a quiz, in which Kenny had to solve three mechanical car problems. SO. CUTE.

Things had pretty much calmed down by Sunday afternoon, so I took Rory out to splash in the puddles that Barry left behind before we headed over to Nola and Nopsi's for Sunday dinner. The kids all enjoyed being together after not being able to do much all weekend.

Let's just hope this hurricane season is as uneventful as Barry was!