I Grew Up in Central Florida — Here’s Why I Save These Best Snacks for Hurricane Season

Hurricane season, perhaps like other traditional seasons, is something I can taste. In fact, the season activates many of my senses — spotting the green, Wizard of Oz-esque tinge to the sky as the storms roll in, the way the wind sounds like a busy train station, and the warm velvety tufts of my dog’s ears as I pet them, repeatedly, while we hide in the closet together. But the taste of the hurricane parades in Florida from August to October is still, to this day, the most vivid to me.

A born and raised central Floridian, I basically grew up in Hurricane Times Square. Never knowing how a storm might pass through (whether it’s a tree piercing its way through the roof or one of the most beautiful, low-pressure days of the year), one thing was very much non-negotiable for my mom and I: our stash of Hurricane Snacks.

My college-aged brother would watch the hurricanes roll in from the porch, much to my mom’s horror, handfuls of Goldfish crackers slammed into his mouth as if he was watching a WWE match. There was something to that, especially in 2004, when Hurricanes Charley, Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne barreled towards Florida all in the matter of six weeks. It was sort of like watching a thriller in slow-motion, slack-jawed in awe and horror. 

There was little more to do than make our speedy runs amongst the crowds to Publix, to pick up our requisite day-sweeteners. 

For me, that meant the multi-pack of Clearly Canadian  (I’d call “dibs” all the Wild Cherry ones) and Mother’s Frosted Circus Animal Crackers. My mom required plentiful fried bologna sandwiches, filled with a crunchy layer of Fritos Honey BBQ Twists for intrigue on days spent just waiting for the eye to pass. My brother and I would take turns, not only on the Playstation 2, but sorting our favorite shapes from cartoonish cereal boxes (Blueberry Morning’s dried blueberries, Lucky Charms’ red balloon and violet horseshoe marshmallows ).

It wasn’t that we didn’t take hurricanes seriously — far from it. Evacuation warnings usually came far too late to honor (if they ever came at all). So more often than not we’d live by a metaphorical flip of a coin: be trapped mid-storm driving the four to six hours to exit this too-long state with jacked up gas prices, or wait it out with our dogs, our belongings, and our hard-won snacks. It was a quick, albeit tricky decision each time.

One summer when we lived in Oregon, the neighborhood girls came up to our door to ask my mom if I could go outside and play. “It’s raining,” my mom said, shaking her head. The girls glared back at her, confused. This was Oregon, afterall. “Ma’am, if she doesn’t play in the rain, she won’t play at all.” 

That became a Filson family maxim even after we returned to our monsoon and hurricane-addled Florida. While we didn’t play outside in the hurricanes, we certainly did not let them disrupt us. Hurricanes just became part of the rhythm of the year. 

Known as both the Sunshine State (for the aggressive amounts of sunshine) and the Plywood State (for the aggressive amount of plywood bought to protect windows during hurricane season), Florida has long taught me that I did not experience most weather the way the majority of the country does. I’d ask why winter was given a season if it was “only two weeks long”, and even then, my mom  knew there was something to Sunshine Guilt. She helped stave off the shame of a lazy day by delcaring it was too hot to walk on the asphalt, anyway. A too-hot day in hurricane season became our “Snow Days,” paging through our stacks of library books in a cocoon of blankets, and trying to ignore what was going on outside.

Our hurricane snacks hardly constituted recognizable meals, but to give these snacks something so boring as a purpose — beyond joy — is not the point. It would drain their color, the frosty, misty edges of those cozy memories: me sitting in the innermost hallway closet, doling out an animal cracker to myself, then a bite for my dog, Tank, while rereading books by flashlight to make those days as sweet as we could.

Do you have special “Hurricane Snacks”? Tell us about it in the comments below.