All the warnings. All the hype. All the panic. Almost a week with no school, for a barely even a nor’easter. We’d been hearing all about Hurricane Florence for a week and a half. It was getting strong and big and heading right in our general direction. Admittedly, it was becoming a concern. Would something like this really hit us? I wasn’t convinced. Being a surfer and living on the East Coast, I’ve followed hurricanes closely for decades. They never end up where they are predicted to 5 days to a week out. They have never been super strong that far out in the middle of the Atlantic heading for the East Coast and held on to their strength by the time they got to the coast. They rarely ever hit north of the Carolinas without passing through the Outer Banks first and if one does, it always loses a lot of strength. Would Florence be the first? Doubtful, but we needed to keep an eye on it. Not panic. Not evacuate. Just chill, and see what happens. In the meantime, there was a constant barrage on tv and social media. And because it makes everybody feel important, like they are so special because something important is happening to them, everybody started freaking out. Then the government decided to throw gasoline on the growing fire.
Four to five days out from a possible landfall, the states that were actually supposed to get hit by the hurricane started having their news conferences. With their sign language person next to them they dramatically announced evacuations from this large, dangerous, historic storm that was going end the world as we know it. The sign language person was obviously necessary because you have to show just how much you care, even though every deaf person that could possibly be watching would have a tv with closed caption. Well, not to be outdone because we are important too, and we might also get rain and wind, the governor of Virginia decided to hold his own press conference with his own sign language person, and announced mandatory evacuations for Zone A in our state flood zone system. Not voluntary or lets start planning and preparing for a possible evacuation in a couple days, but a full on mandatory evacuation – four days from a possible landfall. A landfall that at that moment was predicted to be 150-200 miles to our south, which would have only brought us tropical storm conditions. That’s if the storm didn’t lose strength and/or move away from us. Of course, this one could do what no other storm has ever done and get stronger and head right for us, and calling for people to get ready and plan for evacuations would have had everyone ready to move if the worst case happened. But what our fine governor did was call for mandatory evacuations, catching all the cities around here off guard, forcing schools closed for the rest of the week, businesses to close, people to panic, and everything to get uprooted. And what did the storm do? It lost strength, like they always do this far north, it moved further south, and we got conditions a lot less than our average nor’easter. I get it. It’s better to be safe than sorry, but during all this the storm was never forecasted to directly hit us. Never. The tides we were supposed to get from this storm were never forecasted to be even close to the worst we have ever seen. We have had lots of hurricanes, tropical storms and bad nor’easters around here over the years and we have never had a government reaction like this one before. Pretty unbelievable.
Then there is the off the chart media “fake news” let’s do anything we can to get the highest ratings coverage. There is never any context ever to what has happened before in history. What is happening now is the first time this has ever happened to anybody in history and it is important. You must watch and eat it up. And they sure eat it up. This, of course, leads to well intentioned friends and family contacting us and offering that we can leave our house and go stay with them in New Jersey or Connecticut – because what they are seeing on the tv looks like its going to be bad for us. It is hard work, I know, to not listen to the hype and craziness and actually look at the forecast, look at how far out the winds go from the center of the storm, and do the math. There was never any way based on all the official forecasts the whole time this storm has been tracked that we were ever in any real danger here in this area. But that doesn’t get ratings, it doesn’t make people feel important, it doesn’t allow politicians to grandstand and it doesn’t sell things.
Here is a hilarious perfect example of the world we live in now:
dave's word 