Andrew Sullivan sums it up perfectly:
"HERE SHE COMES: My favorite thing about hurricanes is the coverage. Matt Drudge is getting the vapors, the way he does. Others are getting a little uptight. I also love the way weather people on the telly pretend to be terribly upset that a hurricane may come and give us hell, when quite obviously they're having the time of their lives. The crushing look of disappointment they feel telling viewers it isn't going to be as intense as they first 'feared' has to be seen to be believed. My own rule of thumb with hurricanes is that if they warn you about them, it'll be ok. It's the ones they don't tell you about that'll kill you. ..."
That sums up my feelings exactly. I lived in Houston for a number of years, and every couple of years a "hurricane of the century" would be swirling around out in the Gulf of Mexico with it's eyeball staring right at Houston. The weather reporters would go absolutely nuts!
And it was contagious. Those people too foolish to have stocked up on things early would rush to the stores, and wipe out all the shelves of canned goods, bottled water and batteries, and they would stand in long lines trying to buy all the other stuff you're supposed to have already. What a bunch of idiots! So, there I was standing in a crowded store wishing I had stocked up earlier.
As I stood in the long checkout line I struck up a conversation with an old fellow who was just smiling and shaking his head and laughing at all of these panicky people. It won't hit here, he said, they never do, he said. The guy must have been crazy!
Then, while still a few hundred miles out the hurricane would head north toward Louisiana. We were saved! And those dented cans of stuff I would never eat got tossed out.
After a few of these experiences I became like that crazy old man and began to think of it as just a part of life near a coast.
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