Hurricanes are anything but hypothetical to me, even though I've never been through one and hope I never will be.
Those storms became very real to me when I married a man who had family in hurricane country. His sister and her family lost almost everything in Camille (they were living near New Orleans at the time). That happened a few years before I met him, but I can remember his sister talking about it years later.
They ended up moving to the Mississippi Gulf coast, and every year during hurricane season, we'd be glued to CNN any time there was a tropical storm headed that way, crossing our fingers that they were going to be okay. They were always smart about evacuating, but it was still nerve-wracking at times.
After her husband passed away, she continued to live in the house they had built in Waveland, MS, after Camille. She was still there when Katrina came through and flattened her entire neighborhood except for her house, which turned out to be on slightly higher ground than all the others!
Over the years, I learned more about hurricanes than I really needed to know, living in the Midwest. 
My sil is no longer living, but hurricane season still makes me twitchy. I guess it just became an ingrained habit! 
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