With less than 48 hours before Hurricane Milton would barrel toward my home as a major Category 4 hurricane, I sat in a rural gas station outside of Ocala, Florida, and bawled my eyes out. 

My truck had just 22 miles of gas left in the tank when I pulled into a long line of cars and trucks filling their tanks, generators and gas cans in a frenzy that sadly felt too familiar to me as a lifelong Floridian. Emotions ran high less than two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused mass devastation through Florida on its way to North Carolina. 

People were taking this one seriously. 

The highways were gridlocked with cars heading north. The World Equestrian Center—Ocala was at capacity, with a waiting list for horses and their owners trying to get out of the path of a storm, which would reach catastrophic Category 5 status before it made landfall.

This was the third gas station I’d pulled into after dropping my horse off at a friend’s farm. The one before ran out of gas just three cars ahead of my turn at the pump. The first had no gas left at all. I had evacuated my Thoroughbred gelding Mikey here ahead of Milton’s arrival. None of the horses at my urban boarding barn in Tampa Bay were evacuated for Helene. But for Milton, few owners wanted them to stay.  

As an editor at the Tampa Bay Times, Florida’s largest newspaper, covering hurricane season is a competitive sport. I’d learn in the days to come that Hurricane Milton was about to be the Super Bowl of the 2024 season. 

The ‘Cone Of Terror’

I woke up on Sunday, Oct. 6,  to a flurry of panicked texts in my boarding barn’s group chat. 

This was nothing new; with every impending storm, stress levels rise if you live anywhere in Florida. Even if your home isn’t highlighted in one of the dozen of colorful meteorologist spaghetti models or even worse, the ill-fated “cone of error,” you wait and you watch. You stalk the local weathermen. You buy the bottled water and the Ramen. And you wait some more, anxiously hoping for a wobble in the storm’s track. 

But stress levels were off the charts this time, with Helene’s devastating arrival having caused record storm surge across Tampa Bay and even more destruction in North Florida and beyond, just weeks before. Several of my fellow boarders and friends already had lost so much during Helene, including their entire coastal homes. 

And now another one? 

The farm owner coordinated a commercial hauler to get the horses from our Pinellas County farm to Wellington by Monday evening. Given the 24/7 nature of the news cycle during the hurricane, the last thing I wanted to do was worry about the safety and care of my heart horse, Mikey. 

But making the call so early—days before the storm’s possible arrival—made me queasy. Any local Florida folk will tell you a hurricane’s path can and will shift many times, including in the hours just before landfall. You prepare for the worst but hope for the best. As for Mikey, I had only just moved him into this new boarding barn five weeks before. I felt unsure about trusting people I barely knew to take care of my horse on the other side of the state while, on top of everything else, he was rehabbing a recent coffin bone fracture. 

So I got in the truck Monday morning and headed in the opposite direction of all the horses from the farm. I took all my news meetings from the road as I bussed Mikey to the middle of the state. 

Not For The Faint Of Heart

When horse people find out I live in Florida, I always get the “you’re so lucky!” comments. With Wellington and Ocala in easy driving distance, and the beach just minutes away, it sure sounds like any equestrian’s dream. But there’s a reason most horse people only come here for a few months out of the year: They avoid the brutal summers—and the storm season.

Managing horses through Florida summers isn’t for the faint of heart. It’s hard work, with extreme heat and wet conditions. But you learn to live with it, hurricanes and all. The “winters” really are worth it. 

But you don’t live in Florida without preparing for the storms that inevitably come. I’ve lived here all my life, and Milton was only the second time I’ve evacuated horses I owned out of the path of a hurricane. 

Like with anything else in the horse world, people manage their care during hurricanes differently. Inside the barn or turned out? Wrapped or keep legs naked? Reduce grain intake but add salt or electrolytes to increase water consumption? It all comes down to a horse owner’s comfort level. I’m not sure there’s a wrong answer. (These tips from Kelly Vineyard, a nutritionist with Purina Animal Health and a fellow Floridian, feel sound to me.)

But whatever your plan is, commit to it. Then hunker down. 

I got Mikey settled in a stall at my friend’s farm, unhitched the trailer and gave him a kiss on the nose. 

See you on the other side, sweet boy. 

Working The Hurricane

At the Tampa Bay Times, I edit reporters who cover real estate, hospitals, insurance, tourism and more. But when a hurricane is on the horizon, we all write about it. During Helene, my reporters were deployed into some of the hardest-hit areas, wading into flooded neighborhood streets in the middle of the night and talking to residents in the moments after losing so much. That was the job during Milton. Only this time, our work home became part of the story when a construction crane perched atop a developing condo tower next door crashed through our newsroom building. (Luckily no one was inside at the time.)

We put the plywood over the windows of our St. Petersburg home for only the second time since buying it seven years ago (Hurricane Irma in 2017 was the first time.) We stacked sandbags high in front of the doors. And we hoped it would still be here once the sun came up Thursday morning. 

The Tampa city mayor told CNN viewers that those who did not evacuate in time would die. Viral images and video of Tropicana Field, home to the local MLB team, the Tampa Bay Rays, and just blocks from my own home, showed billowing sheets of a destroyed dome rooftop wafting in Milton’s gusts. 

Where Helene brought record storm surge, Milton’s high winds caused mass power outages and damage. Trees fell in already saturated ground. Inland rivers flooded at record levels. Horse farms near friends, including places I previously boarded, were inundated with stormwater. Even now, more than a week after Milton, people and horses are still displaced in Tampa Bay. 

But Mikey was OK. So were we. And so was our home. We were lucky. 

Seventeen miles. That’s how much I had left in the tank when a gas station employee dressed in a bright orange safety vest knocked on my window. He was attempting to mitigate the unnerving traffic. I had turned off the truck’s engine to conserve what little gas I had left. I had just ugly cried while texting my boss, panicked I wouldn’t find enough gas to get me back home two hours away after dropping Mikey off at his evacuation barn. 

Maybe it’s time to start looking for a hotel nearby, I remember him writing. That’s when I lost it. 

I wiped the tears and snot from my blotchy red face and rolled down the window. The gas station attendant asked me if I was OK. 

I blurted out what felt like an incoherent string of words: “I’m from Tampa. I evacuated my horse. I’m never going to get home if I can’t fill up.”

He nodded like he understood. And with a few waves of his hands, he opened a path to the pump for me to fill up. 

Driving south, the roads were empty, except for the occasional police patrol car or National Guard Humvee. My tank was full, thanks to the kindness of a stranger. And Mikey was safe. 

---

Justine Griffin is a newspaper journalist and amateur eventer and dressage rider based in Tampa Bay, Florida. She’s also a host of the Heels Down Happy Hour Podcast.