Storms a' coming

Hurricane season comes to Houston with June's heat. Low pressure systems are swirling off the west coast of Africa to cross the Atlantic. Growing as they cross the sun-warmed water, they become dark mindless angry beasts.

It's good to be prepared in advance if you live along the coast. Towards that end, Houston held a hurricane preparation workshop today at the George R. Brown convention center.


Wethergirls and hurricanes.

The conference center was filled with preparedness gear vendors, emergency services, and government agencies. I guess you have to take the good with the bad... Like every conference goodies were handed out. Pens, pamphlets, flashlights, blinky things, t-shirts, etc...


Wethergirls and treasure bags.


Hurricane-proof window films. I want this stuff.


Kids, stay in school or you'll be limited to jobs involving large foam costumes!


The Red Cross was passing out free MRE's and batteries, leading to a big line in to their booth.


By the time we got to the their booth all they had left were batteries. Tons and tons of batteries!


Of course Houston's CERT was there giving first aid seminars.


They had one section devoted to preparing kids. Each child was given a whistle. Wasn't that just...wonderful.


I'm not sure what the Houston Zoo has to do with hurricane preps...


...but they had snakes so my girls were happy.


So did the Nature Discovery Center.


The coolest thing was the portable Imax theater. The picture doesn't do it justice, this thing was huge! Inside the big, inflatable igloo-thingy was an Imax projector showing movies about tornadoes.


The Houston Arboretum was also there. As we walked up to the booth the lady working it let out a squeal and said, "It's you!".

Being famous rocks.

Turns out this blog is popular among the arboretum employees. She knew me and the Wethergirls from these scribblings and is hoping to attend my edible plant class there coming up on June 7th. We chatted for a while while the girls made bead snakes (of course).

By this time the girls were hungry. Thankfully Walmart was giving everyone a free hotdog, chips and a bottle of water.


This is not a product placement. However, I'd like to point out that I'm completely open to being paid for such a thing!

Mini and Mambo had a great time judging how they both fell asleep on the drive home. I'm not sure if they'll have another one of these this year but if they do y'all should go. Admission is free, though parking is a pain. If you aren't sure about what you should have on hand for hurricane season this workshop will fill you in and fill you up.

Adventure! Excitement! Hurricane Gear!