There are unexpected events, like today's earthquake, that throw us all for a loop and gets us talking.

Other events, like hurricanes, you can see coming days ahead of time, but you have to watch them like a hawk because in a matter of a few hours a small one can hit the warm water and turn into a monster.

A couple months after Hurricane Katrina rocked New Orleans and much of the Gulf Coast, her crabby sister Rita came along.

I was in college at the time, and about 200 miles from the coast, but kept watch as I always did because my parents live just outside of Houston, Texas and about 10 miles from the coast.

I remember going to class that morning and Rita was still a Category 2, with winds about 90 miles an hour. That seems bad to those who haven't experienced one, but if it is moving fast, it's not that big of a deal.

However, when I got out of class at about 4 p.m., the Gulf waters certainly turned it into a wild creature as a Category 5, with winds averaging about 185 mph and still growing.

My dad got out of work about the same time, and also saw the projected path was right for Houston, and my family quickly packed up and called me to find a hotel for them in my college town.

Problem was, they were already all booked, mainly with those moved away from Louisiana because of Katrina. Luckily they were able to locate a relative of a family friend and stay with them.

However, the trip was more than they expected.

Normally it is a three-hour drive to Nacogdoches from my parent's house, but with everyone seemingly leaving at the same time, it took much longer.

Keep in mind, driving here to Indiana on an annual basis for summers took us about 19 hours, with a couple stops for an hour or two for meals or a little rest.

The 150-mile excursion took them 22-and-a-half hours.

Upon greeting my parents when they got in town my dad said, "If I had known it was going to take that long, I would have headed the other way and gone to Indiana."

His words had an ironic twist a couple days later as the hurricane they were trying to get away from hit Nacogdoches straight on. We even got to experience the break in the sky as the eye of the storm went right across the campus and town.

Granted, by that time, winds were down to 50-60 mph but everyone who transported north had a good laugh about it.

But tropical storms and hurricanes can be very random as well.

My hometown received only a couple of inches of rain and a few fences were blown down during Rita, so it wasn't too bad.

However, a few days after I graduated high school in 2001, a tropical storm hit us and the floodgates opened.

Tropical Storm Allison had only 50 mph winds, but stalled right over the Houston area with the eye still in the Gulf and dropped 20 inches of rain in five hours. Luckily, our house sat just high enough because the water came up into the yard and essentially knocked on our front door before the rain stopped.

Because of the way our neighborhood was angled for runoff to go into a ditch a couple blocks away, houses at the end of the street had up to seven feet of water in them. It was so bad even one of the large dump trucks that came in to help the people got stuck in the water.

I've lived through some pretty wacky weather other than those two events, and today's earthquake just adds to the list.