reading out the storm

Willa is coming for a visit.

And I do not mean the mother of the little red-headed girl that was my neighbor and stole my nine-year-old heart.

This Willa is a modern Guabancex. For the past week, a storm system has been evolving off the coast of southern Mexico -- going through the usual metamorphosis of depression to tropical storm to hurricane.

We have not had many hurricanes this year on the Pacific coast. But Willa may make up for our slow weather season.

It is now a category 4 hurricane -- and at the upper range of a 4. 155 mile per hour winds.

Several friends have sent me email and messages asking if there is any danger of Willa making a visit here.

With hurricanes, there is never any certainty. But Willa appears to be making her plodding 7 mile per hour journey north at a healthy distance away from us.

That healthy distance will not exist for others in Mexico, though. Tomorrow afternoon, she is predicted to take a gradual right turn and crash into the Mexican mainland coast somewhere above Puerto Vallarta. If that category 4 status holds (or increases), Willa's encounter with civilization will not be beneficial.

What we are getting here is rain. Lots of rain. But that has been true for the past week. October is turning out to be our local storm month.

A testament of how infrastructure has improved in the short time I lived here is the fact that after hours of rain, we still have electricity. The first year I was here, power would often fail at the first sprinkle.

But this is no time to be sanguine. Another storm -- Vicente -- is on the way. I had not paid much attention to Willa because its storm cone had never put our coast at risk.

Vicente is a healthy tropical storm puttering around in the Gulf of Tehuantepec. Unlike Willa, its storm cone is heading right toward us. Probably arriving here early Wednesday morning.

Currently, its winds are 45 miles per hour. But there is a lot of warm water for it to cross before it gets here, and that could feed its fury.

All of that is speculation, though. The National Hurricane Service has issued no warnings. Like many of its predecessors, Vicente could run out of steam before it arrives.

So, I will sit inside and read. Trying to get my exercise walking in the street right now would be like jogging in Venice. I could walk on the upstairs terrace, but, in the rain, it may as well be an ice pond.

And I can dream of that little red-headed girl.

What was her name?