Hurricane Hysteria

Disclaimer: I wish to declare up front that I am not making light of Hurricanes or Hurricane Damage and Suffering. I am just pointing out that our News Reporting is obsessed with always making approaching hurricanes sound a dire as is possible. May I also point out that, thank heaven, humor is still to be found is even dire happenings, as is demonstrated by the Lady In The Boat Harbour With The Microphone below.

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As bad as it was, thank heaven it was not as bad as the News Media reported it was going to be…

“Nuclear Hurricane”? ... I expected to see a Mushroom Shaped Cloud going from city to city.

 

Today is 9/20/17 and we have Hurricane Maria out there. The Governor of Puerto Rico is trying top the Mayor of Miami Beach’s “Nuclear Hurricane” comment by releasing this statement…

“No generation has seen a hurricane like this since San Felipe II in 1928. This is an unprecedented atmospheric system.”

We’ll just have to wait and see.

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I know these things are unpredictable but some of the hysteria was just downright out of sight…

Ø At 11 pm Saturday my TV kept saying it was a Cat 5 Hurricane and, by that time, it was not still a Cat 5.

Ø One reporter said it was possible that Miami Hi-Rise Building could collapse but he gave us hope when he said he thought they would not fall down.

Ø He also said they expected 150mph winds at the bottom of these Hi-Risers and higher up on the building the winds would be 225mph. Maybe it was. I don’t know.

Ø Friday night it was reported that the Last Fuel Truck had come and gone and almost every station was out of gas. Saturday morning it was reported that most stations had gas, the traffic going north was light and there were no lines at the service stations.

Ø I don’t get cable TV anymore but I do get news clips. I was watching news clips on Saturday Afternoon for about 20 minutes before I figured out that they were showing me news clips from Friday Night and not telling me that it was not up to the moment reporting. Stop and think about this. Why show old clips at all? People watching could be told to get out now but by Saturday Afternoon the official word was stay put because it is too late to make it out. Or there was no gas to buy, when there was gas to buy.

Ø I heard one frenzied reporter say in very alarming tones, “The water in the bay is churning!” I bet it did more than churn before the storm had passed.

Ø I clicked on a screen that read “Live Streaming Coverage”. I stared at this Live Streaming Coverage Screen waiting for the Live Coverage before I realized that their Live Coverage had died because the screen never changed.

Ø Of course there were the Adjectives (there are always the Adjectives)…Herculean, Devastating, Catastrophic, Monstrous, Decimated (None of them know that this does not mean Completely Destroying Every City or Killing Every Person but Destroying or Killing every 10^th City or Person) (Yea, I know it can also mean Destroy Large Proportion of Something, which is closer to what they are trying to say, but I am being picky).

Ø The Storm Surge was predicted to be the big problem/killer. I had a lot of trouble trying to find out what the actual Storm Surge had been after the storm but before the storm the news reporting would not stop talking about it. Naples was reported to be going to get 12’ to 18’ of Storm Surge. After the storm I found an interview with the Mayor of Naples who referred to the Storm Surge as “minimal”.

Ø In the same interview, the interviewer said that the wind had been 142 MPH in Naples. The reporter hysteria rose significantly when she said “142 MPH”. The Mayor down played it by saying that 142 MPH was only a wind gust at the airport and not a sustained wind. The interviewer seemed very disappointed with his clarification.

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Finally, I saw this Lady In the Boat Harbour with a Microphone and the biggest eyes you could ever imagine. Two things she reported on made me scratch my head…

Ø She was standing on a dock that had 4 empty slips behind her. She said that the marina used to be full but almost all the boats had been moved out by their owners for safety reasons. What she did not understand was that the camera could see beyond the 4 empty slips. The rest of the marina was cram packed with boats.

Ø Then she moved to the left of the 4 empty slips and the camera moved to the boat that was tied up in that slip. She said something like this, For the boats that remain, their owners have secured them with ropes. I thought to myself… When there is no threat of a hurricane, do the owners just leave them floating around the marina?

 

Yea, I know I’m being picky.

 

Would I kid u?

Smartfella