Can You Set Off Fireworks in a Hurricane?

Hurricane Arthur shares a name with an English king and, like an English king, Arthur's fixing to ruin America's Independence Day. Just upgraded from a tropical storm, the first hurricane of the season is heading right for the coast of North Carolina and will hit around dawn on the mother-lovin' Fourth of July, when Carolinians should, by all rights, be kicking off a three-day weekend bacchanal of vinegary BBQ, drinking, and especially fireworks.

Instead, on account of a stupid hurricane, the governor is declaring a state of emergency for 25 counties near the coast and evacuating the Outer Banks, and North Carolina's not the only one. In Boston, the Boston Pops' Fourth of July concert and fireworks are happening on July 3, which is crazy, like dogs and cats getting along.

In the spirit of the season, and sticking it to English kings even sometimes to our own detriment, shouldn't we just be going forward with the fireworks displays? Damn the torpedoes and all that? You think the Brewer/Patriot Sam Adams or John or any of those other proto-Massholes would've let the Boston Pops play a day early, just because of a Category 1 hurricane? This is almost definitely the World Cup's fault.

Hurricane Arthur churns up the Atlantic & NASA keeps a close eye on the storm from space http://t.co/9dhTpiW8XX pic.twitter.com/UifQm4lrQ9

— NASA360 (@NASA360) July 3, 2014

Even though I love that Governor Pat McCrory told North Carolinians very specifically, “Don't put your stupid hat on,” I'm just going to go ahead and put my stupid hat on for a moment and examine just how dangerous it is to launch off fireworks in a hurricane.

I mean, what is a hurricane anyway? Just some wind, some rain, a name and an excuse for the Weather Channel correspondents to bust out their snappiest windbreakers, right?

In the case of Arthur, when it hits Cape Hatteras tomorrow morning, it will bring 3 to 5 inches of rain, and “sustained winds up to 85 mph,” according to Tony Saavedra of the National Weather Service.

It seems like water would be a real deterrent for fireworks, to say nothing of watching them comfortably, but as the United Kingdom Fireworks Review website notes, “Contrary to popular belief fireworks do work in the rain if you take suitable precautions when setting them up.”

All you got to do, it seems, is keep that powder dry, as they say. Just wrap 'em in plastic as you set them up, and you're good to go. Tear, light, and admire. Philip Butler, of Fireworks by Grucci, told CNN in 2009 that the moisture may even change the colors. "A brilliant blue may appear as a royal blue," he said.

So that's fun and unique, even if anything “royal” is sort of off-message.

The other side of a hurricane's water problem are storm surges and rip currents. Flooding could definitely ruin your fireworks, so keep them on the top shelf. As for rip currents, they should only be a problem if you're shooting off fireworks from the water, and even then, if you didn't have a way to secure your fireworks barge before, the hurricane is the least of your problems. But Arthur-induced rip currents are going persist through the weekend after the hurricane passes, so they're not really a reason for delaying anything.

The dealbreaker, if you take off your stupid hat for a moment, is the wind. Even the Fireworks Alliance has some stern warnings about this one: “When lighting fireworks, consider the direction of the wind and wind speed. Never light fireworks if the wind is too strong.”

Well, what is “too strong” anyway, huh? Who's going to tell you what too strong is?

The fire marshal might actually. There are apparently more fires on the Fourth of July than any other day of the year, and fireworks account for more than half of them.

Sam Villani, the fire marshal of Ocean City, told CNN that city officials, “start taking a hard look at the direction and speed of the wind when it gets to 15 or more knots [about 17 mph]. At 20 knots, we consult the shooters … to see if our perimeter is safe for the crowds. Twenty-knot [23 mph] sustained winds would probably be our cutoff."

If Hurricane Arthur makes landfall tomorrow, it'll be the first hurricane to do so on Independence Day since record keeping by the National Hurricane Center began in 1850. According to lowest estimations, it looks like the wind is going to blow about 350 percent too hard by Ocean City standards, and really any standard once you take your stupid hat off. I mean, even if you keep your stupid hat on, you've probably seen Sharknado enough times (none) to know that you don't want to be hit with a hurricane full of spinning, 1,000-degree debris.

At any rate, it looks like Arthur will be hitting in the morning, and at worst will be disrupting people setting off firecrackers in their driveways, which is a pretty obnoxious pastime, celebration of God-given freedom or not.

For readers in the hurricane zone who are going to be bummed, just remember: proto-Masshole John Adams thought that “the Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.” While you listen to the wind and rain, at least you can find some smug comfort in the fact that everyone else who's out grilling and laughing and day drinking and wearing their stupid hats is wrong. Cold comfort, I know.