Atticus Finch
Call Me a Cab
- Messages
- 2,718
- Location
- Coastal North Carolina, USA
I seldom start new threads, but a friend said something to me today that set me to thinking.
We were talking about Hurricane Earl and how much news coverage has been devoted to that one storm. We were amazed at how long the weather media has been actively following the storm's progress and how many wrong predictions have been made about its possible path and intensity. Of course, hurricanes are now tracked from the minute they begin as tropical waves until they dissipate...this often being a span of several weeks. And nowdays when hurricanes approach land, the blizzard of news chatter about all aspects of tropical weather increases exponentially with each mile a storm comes closer to shore. Weathercasters squawk about angle of approach, storm surge, rainfall, sustained wind speed, gust wind speed, barometric pressure, storm duration and every other imaginable thing that could fill up air time. I have to say, just before landfall, their squawking is almost deafening.
My friend, who is a decade and a half younger than I, asked me to imagine how the "old timers" must have felt back when people could know a hurricane was somewhere out there in the ocean, but couldn't know where it was going or how strong it would be when it arrived. I told him that I didn't have to imagine such a thing. I grew up in Beaufort, N.C. before weather satellites, before computers, before cable TV, before hurricane models...even before Jim Cantore. Most people in Beaufort knew a hurricane was coming only a day or two before it arrived. Some didn’t know at all until they awoke in the middle of the night to eighty knot winds howling outside their window.
So...to those of you who have lived in areas prone to tropical weather impacts, and who can remember vintage weather forecasting...what are your experiences? Ever had a hurricane sneak up on you? Ever had to scurry around trying to prepare for a storm that would be here tomorrow but just hit the news yesterday?
AF
We were talking about Hurricane Earl and how much news coverage has been devoted to that one storm. We were amazed at how long the weather media has been actively following the storm's progress and how many wrong predictions have been made about its possible path and intensity. Of course, hurricanes are now tracked from the minute they begin as tropical waves until they dissipate...this often being a span of several weeks. And nowdays when hurricanes approach land, the blizzard of news chatter about all aspects of tropical weather increases exponentially with each mile a storm comes closer to shore. Weathercasters squawk about angle of approach, storm surge, rainfall, sustained wind speed, gust wind speed, barometric pressure, storm duration and every other imaginable thing that could fill up air time. I have to say, just before landfall, their squawking is almost deafening.
My friend, who is a decade and a half younger than I, asked me to imagine how the "old timers" must have felt back when people could know a hurricane was somewhere out there in the ocean, but couldn't know where it was going or how strong it would be when it arrived. I told him that I didn't have to imagine such a thing. I grew up in Beaufort, N.C. before weather satellites, before computers, before cable TV, before hurricane models...even before Jim Cantore. Most people in Beaufort knew a hurricane was coming only a day or two before it arrived. Some didn’t know at all until they awoke in the middle of the night to eighty knot winds howling outside their window.
So...to those of you who have lived in areas prone to tropical weather impacts, and who can remember vintage weather forecasting...what are your experiences? Ever had a hurricane sneak up on you? Ever had to scurry around trying to prepare for a storm that would be here tomorrow but just hit the news yesterday?
AF
