Living on the Mississippi Gulf Coast came with certain weather expectations: hot humid summers, mild winters, and the occasional hurricane. The strongest storm I personally weathered was Hurricane Elena in 1985. Long time Coast residents will remember Elena's crazy storm track where its approach to central Florida took an abrupt 180. She took aim at Mississippi and slammed the Coast making landfall at Biloxi.
My folks and I decided to weather that storm at our home, so we made our preparations and hunkered down in a central hallway. For hours the wind howled and the deluge of rain slammed our house in sheets. Power was lost quickly, and one by one radio stations we were monitoring went off the air. Suddenly things got very quiet. An interesting phenomena about hurricanes is the calm of the storm's eye, and Elena's track took hers directly over our house. The scene outside was eerie. What was a maelstrom just a few minutes before gave way to the sun in a cloudless sky, and air that was perfectly still. Dad and I walked the property to survey any damage and make any quick repairs we could. Eventually, the clouds rolled back in, the wind picked up from the opposite direction, and just like that, we were back in the storm.
The lyrics of "Have You Ever Seen the Rain?" ask "Have you ever seen the rain come down on a sunny day?" John Fogerty's intent behind the song was to capture his feelings about his brother Tom's departure from CCR at the height of their success. It reminds me of what I experienced in the eye of Hurricane Elena.
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