How a Gulf-bound storm looks from the Caribbean

LES TROIS-ILETS, POINTE DU BOUT, MARTINIQUE — Trois-Îlets, Pointe Du Bout, Martinique — On this tropical island that’s part of France, my family and I encountered the first tropical storm of the season, from the other side of the Gulf of Mexico.

My wife and I are assistant professors at the Manship School at LSU, and we’re here studying journalism in the Caribbean. Our 1-1/2-year-old son and 3-year-old dog, Roux (a choodle from Houma), are here with us, too.

In June, when the warnings from the regional Météo-France office (their version of the National Weather Service) declared that Tropical Storm Bret was inbound to Martinique and to the Lesser Antilles (the easternmost chain of islands in the Caribbean), we began to prepare, just like we would back in Baton Rouge.

According to the Alerte Jaune (“yellow alert”) issued by Météo-France, we needed to stock up on water, nonperishable food and gas up our vehicles. Our temporary Martiniquais neighbors had already beat us to the local Carrefour, i.e. their version of Safeway, but aside from one grouchy driver laying on his horn in the busy, humid parking lot, we found a calm scene of people buying water, sausages, beer and rum — so definitely like Louisianans. Perhaps a little unlike most Louisianans, they were also stocking up on fruit, vegetables and bread — easily three or more baguettes were a common sight.

Staff buzzed in and out of the low-slung, warehouse-like structure, porting in more water on pallets, and older women swapped recipes and gossip in the check-out lines. One of them, with a lot less to buy than us, gestured my wife forward, giving up her spot in line so that the frazzled American visitors could go ahead.

Later, as we strolled past the boarded-up shops and bars in our corner of the island, a younger woman called out “bon courage” (“take heart”) to us as we walked the dog one more time before the outer bands of the storm brought heavy rain.

The local news brought steady reports of preparations and tips for what to do if you faced a landslide or a power outage. The wind did indeed pick up, late in the evening of Thursday, June 22, as we watched our weather apps display the gray, swirling mass of Bret pass slowly just south of the island.

Around 11 p.m., we lost power, but only for a few minutes—the infrastructure on Martinique is robust and has a number of redundancies, including buried telecom and power lines where possible, short, steel towers when that’s not, and hardened substations that resemble little bunkers.

Rain drummed against our Airbnb’s metal shutters and the wind whined through our porch, which doubles as a kitchen, knocking down a wooden stand, but gradually the sounds outside faded.

Our baby had a tough time going to bed, but Roux slept like a mossy cedar log, just like he would back in Louisiana (in his short life his he has been through three major hurricanes and another three severe tropical storms).

As the 2023 hurricane season gets underway, it felt surreal to go through a tropical storm from the other side—from the islands that usually get the first taste of what eventually makes its way over to us.

The experience has made us grateful for our resources back home, but also shown how we can do better — the people on this island took this storm seriously and worked together to make sure it wasn’t any worse than it had to be. Bon courage, Martinique. Merci beaucoup for your example.

Will Mari is an assistant professor of media history and law at the Manship School of Mass Communication at LSU. In the summer, his family often travels for research to other parts of the U.S. and the globe.