The season nobody advertises

September in Florida is the month the brochures skip.

It's hot in a way that feels personal. The afternoon storm shows up on schedule and means it. And every one of us has the same app open, checking the same swirl of colour off the coast of Africa, doing the arithmetic we all pretend we're not doing.

I wrote a song about that a while back called "Hurricane Watch." Not about a storm hitting — about the waiting. The part where the shelves go empty and the gas lines get long and you're being useful, filling jugs, moving the porch furniture, while the sky stays an ordinary blue. That in-between is its own strange feeling and I'd never heard anybody put it in a song, so I tried.

Here's the thing though. September is also when the water is at its warmest all year. The beaches empty out. The sunsets get theatrical in a way that August never quite manages. If you can stand the heat and keep one eye on the tropics, it might be the best month we've got.

That's the trade in this part of the world, and everyone who stays has made peace with it. You get the Gulf when it's bathwater and the sand belongs to you. You just have to keep watching the sky.

Stay safe out there this month. Charge things. Know where your flashlight is. And go get in the water while it's this good.