That from the chief meteorologist on our local ABC affiliate last night as he struggled to reconcile lower wind reports coming out of hurricane hunter aircraft and higher wind reports he was getting from other sources. It was an odd thing to say, something obviously off script but it falls in line nicely with this from AJStrata:
In a truly cosmic case of irony, the cries of doom prior to Irene landing came just as all the energy was dissipating from that storm and bringing the East Coast of America an above average wet weekend. For example take Brad Johnson, hand-wringer extraordinaire:
Hurricane Irene is bearing down on the Outer Banks of North Carolina as a Category Two storm, and is expected to track a path of destruction up the densely populated Atlantic coast, with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg ordering the first-ever mandatory evacuation of low-lying areas of the city. As the U.S. government report “Global Climate Change Impacts in the US” summarized in 2009, warming of the oceans is causing Atlantic hurricanes to become more intense and dangerous:
Before Brad could even catch is frightened breathe, Irene was falling apart yesterday afternoon. By this morning it limped to shore a Cat 1. Sadly, Brad is not the only easily excitable green lefty out there. Mayor Bloomberg probably pulled the trigger a little too quickly based on the ridiculous hype this storm has received. The Nanny state went into pure and pathetic melt down yesterday, and is not looking good this morning. Remember the story of the boy who cried “Wolf!” folks.
I suggest we remember humankind has survived much worse than this many times in our history, usually with much less technology and basically no warning at all. It is strange that all our fancy modern warnings have produced is rampant fear mongering- instead of sober preparations.
Overhyped or not, it behooves us all to hope for the best while preparing for the worst… and to do so absent any reliance on the government.
On this Saturday morning here where I’m at (southeastern Virginia, about 45 minutes from Virginia Beach by car), things are certainly wet and windy and should get worse as the storm has yet to pass.
There have been some power outages, some reports of felled trees but I’m expecting, hoping, that Irene will not live up to the hype predicted not 24 hours ago.
UPDATE: 12 noon, it’s raining very heavily and we’re seeing wind gusts at around 45 mph. Storm is supposed to be due east from us around 8 PM tonight… if it’s going to get worse, it could get ugly.
