Hurricane Season Anxiety in Lake Charles: When the Forecast Brings Back More Than Worry
Photo of my demolished office after Hurricane Laura
This week marks six years since Hurricane Laura tore through Southwest Louisiana.
For a lot of us, that sentence alone brings something back.
You probably remember where you were when it became clear that Laura was really coming. You may remember the decisions that had to be made, the things you packed, the things you left behind, and the feeling of wondering what would still be standing when you came home.
I remember all of that very clearly.
Hurricane Rita had been the last major hurricane I experienced before Laura, but I was younger then. My grandparents were the adults making the decisions. They were the ones figuring out where we were going, what needed to be packed, and how everyone was going to stay safe.
Laura was different.
This time, my wife and I were the adults.
We had children depending on us. My wife was pregnant with our third child. We were trying to decide what to take, where to go, and how to get everyone to safety. Before leaving, we took pictures of the house because we honestly did not know what we would come home to.
That was a strange feeling.
You are standing inside your own home taking pictures of your belongings because there is a real possibility that some of it may not be there when you return.
And all of this was happening in the middle of COVID. Just a month earlier, I had been seriously sick with COVID and had come close to needing hospitalization. Life already felt uncertain before a Category 4 hurricane started heading toward us.
Sometimes the hardest part was what came after
We evacuated to Jackson, Mississippi.
I came back the day after the storm.
Our house was still standing, but there was water damage inside. I remember getting on the roof and putting a tarp over it. I had to get a generator running and set up a dehumidifier to start trying to dry everything out.
There really was not much time to process any of it.
You just started working.
A few days later, I went to check on my counseling office. The building had been badly damaged. I had to climb through a window to get inside and see what I could salvage.
Some of my books made it.
A lot of things did not.
I remember standing there going through what was left and realizing that I had no idea what was going to happen with my practice. I was not seeing clients. I was not working. There was no income coming in from the practice, my wife was pregnant, our home needed repairs, and my office was gone.
That part of hurricanes does not always get talked about as much.
The storm passes, but your life does not immediately go back to normal.
Sometimes that is when the real stress begins.
A lot of people learned the same lesson during Laura
After the storm, I remember talking with people who had stayed in Lake Charles during Laura.
Every person I spoke with told me some version of the same thing.
They would never stay for another major hurricane.
Some had underestimated how intense Laura would be. They described the sound of the wind, the pressure, the trees coming down, parts of buildings coming apart, and the helpless feeling of realizing there was nowhere else to go once conditions became dangerous.
For some people, that night changed the way they look at storms permanently.
And then, before we had much time to recover, Delta came through about six weeks later.
Then came the February 2021 freeze.
Then flooding.
For a lot of people around here, it felt like we barely got our footing before something else happened.
That matters when we talk about hurricane anxiety.
Why August can still feel different
Six years later, you may be doing perfectly fine and still notice something change when hurricane season gets active.
Maybe you start checking the weather more.
Maybe you notice every disturbance that forms in the Atlantic.
Maybe someone posts a spaghetti model on Facebook and suddenly you are reading comments from fifty people who have no idea where the storm is going, but somehow you cannot stop looking.
Maybe you start thinking about whether the generator will start.
Do we have enough gas?
Where would we evacuate?
What about the pets?
What if the roads are packed?
What if we leave and nothing happens?
What if we stay and it gets bad?
What if the house gets damaged again?
What if insurance does not cover it?
Those are not ridiculous questions in Southwest Louisiana.
We have lived through situations where those questions became very real, very quickly.
The problem is not that you think about hurricanes.
The problem is when your mind cannot stop thinking about them.
Preparedness and panic are not the same thing
I think about hurricane anxiety a little like a car alarm that is set too sensitive.
The alarm has a purpose. You want it to go off when something is actually wrong.
But sometimes a big truck drives by and the alarm starts screaming even though nobody is touching the car.
After living through a storm like Laura, your mind can sometimes respond the same way.
Preparedness is useful.
You should know where you would go. You should have a plan for your children, pets, medications, important documents, and supplies. You should know which weather sources you trust and what would cause your family to evacuate.
That is preparation.
Panic is different.
Panic is checking the forecast every twenty minutes when nothing has changed.
It is losing sleep over a system that is still thousands of miles away.
It is being unable to focus at work because you are watching every model run.
It is snapping at your spouse because they are not as worried as you are.
It is spending the entire summer waiting for something bad to happen.
The goal is not to stop caring about hurricane season.
Around here, that would not make much sense.
The goal is to be prepared without having to live in a constant state of alarm.
A few things that can make hurricane season easier
Choose the weather sources you trust before you are anxious.
The National Hurricane Center and a trusted local meteorologist may be enough. When anxiety is high, fifteen Facebook groups and endless model updates usually do not give you more certainty.
Decide when you are going to check the weather.
If nothing is threatening the area, you probably do not need to monitor the tropics all day. Give yourself permission to check at certain times and then go back to your life.
Make the important decisions on a calm day.
Talk with your family before a storm exists. Where would you evacuate? What would make you decide to leave? Who handles the pets? What needs to go in the car? What needs to be done to the house?
Those decisions are much harder to make when everyone is already scared.
Remember that being prepared does not mean being able to control everything.
That may be one of the hardest lessons from Laura. We can prepare. We can make good decisions. We can take precautions. But we cannot make the storm turn.
Sometimes accepting that difference can take a little pressure off.
We went through a lot together
One reason I wanted to write this is because hurricane anxiety in Lake Charles is not an abstract topic for me.
I live here too.
I remember evacuating.
I remember wondering if our house would still be there.
I remember getting on the roof.
I remember the generator running.
I remember climbing through the window of my office and trying to save what I could.
I remember wondering what was going to happen to my family and my practice.
And I remember watching the people around me go through their own versions of the same thing.
Six years later, most of us have rebuilt a lot.
But rebuilding a house, reopening a business, or getting the lights back on does not necessarily mean everything about the experience disappears.
Sometimes August still feels a little different.
Sometimes a storm forming far away brings back more than we expect.
And sometimes it helps to sit down with someone and talk about it.
That is one of the things I genuinely enjoy about the work I do. I get to sit with people from this community who have been through some of the same storms, losses, changes, and uncertainty that my own family has experienced.
I do not think that means we have to make hurricane season into something bigger than it is.
I think it just means we can be honest about the fact that we have been through a lot here.
If this time of year still brings some of that back for you, you are certainly not the only person in Southwest Louisiana who feels it.
This blog is for informational purposes only and does not create a therapist-client relationship. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, call or text 988 or contact local emergency services.
Brent Woods, MA, LPC-S, CSAT, is a licensed professional counselor and owner of Woods Counseling Services in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Woods Counseling Services provides in-person counseling in Lake Charles and telehealth services for clients throughout Louisiana and Texas.
