The wind that warns

This week the south wind blew again with a force not felt for months.

The wind that warns

This week, the southern wind returned with a force we hadn’t felt in months.

But it wasn’t just any wind—it carried the salt of the Gulf, the murmur of a restless sea, and the silent message that hurricane season has begun.

In Baja California Sur, the sky doesn’t need to speak. The clouds do. So do the pelicans that change their flight path, the heat that thickens, the sea that loses its crystalline blue and turns deeper, heavier, more foreboding.

Hurricane season arrives every year as if it were the first time. Yet not everyone listens. Some fear it—rightfully so. Others ignore it—foolishly. I welcome it with an old kind of respect, the kind that isn’t taught, but felt in the skin when you grow up between dry land and shifting tides.

This season’s arrival reminds us once again that we live on fragile ground. Here, everything is connected by the wind: the mangroves to the tin rooftops, the hills to the poorly paved streets, political decisions to makeshift shelters.

One misjudged storm, one illegal construction, one bureaucratic delay—and everything can unravel, literally and emotionally.

Are we ready? Authorities say we are. Shelters are being checked, Civil Protection is active, coordination is underway. Hopefully. But I still see people living in flood zones, houses with cardboard roofs, and a Risk Atlas that only gets mentioned at press conferences.

And yet, not all is bleak. I’ve seen neighbors already packing emergency kits.

Fishermen reading the sky better than any weather app. Youth leading information brigades on WhatsApp and community radio. Women managing shelters without budgets, only with the fierce will to protect others.

Some hurricanes come from the sea. Others come from indifference. The first can be predicted. The second—we stop only by showing up for one another.

I hope this year the wind takes no more than it must.

I hope this year we listen before the thunder.

I hope we act not just as spectators,but as stewards of this land that, though arid, still blooms when treated with care.

From this southern corner,where the wind doesn’t lie,as every Friday,

Sebastián del Mar.