Big hurricane! Not.

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				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Big hurricane! Not.				September 11, 2010

I don’t know about you, but I was extremely disappointed by the pitiful performance of Hurricane Earl. While I don’t believe everything I read, and I certainly don’t believe everything I hear on TV, I really thought that Earl was going to develop into something metaphysically meaningful and stun us all with the uncontrollable power of Mother Nature.

“MONSTER STORM” blazed the headline on one area paper that promised the end of the world if Earl happened to wobble a few feet closer to the coast or come ashore in North Carolina. At the same time, the Ad Channel, also known as the Weather Channel, was cranking out round-the-clock dire predictions for anyone who lived anywhere near coastal areas from North Carolina to Maine. Armageddon was surely upon us, since Earl’s muscles were growing bigger by the hour.

Here in Williamsburg, WMBG’s John Magliola was warning two days before the storm neared the Outer Banks that we could indeed suffer the wrath of a Category 5 hurricane. “Here’s what I want you to do,” said Magliola. “Go out and stock up on batteries and stow them away. Then go out and stock up on canned food and other perishable (sic) goods and stow them away.”

Two days later, when he realized the monster storm might not strike, Magliola was still begging his listeners to at least go out and fill up their gas tanks. This was followed by an interview with the manager of our local Ace Hardware store, who also recommended that we mosey on over there to load up on flashlights, batteries, lamp oil, chain saws and generators.

I’ve often felt that the media and the supermarket chains were in cahoots when it comes to severe weather predictions. The first thing we’re told to do is go out and maraud, plunder and decimate supermarket shelves until no bread, water or canned foods are left. Why they think that normal people want to survive for three or four weeks on bread dunked in canned corn is beyond me, but those are the marching orders, and, like lemmings, we follow them.

Similarly, gas stations and hardware stores make out like bandits when weather reports get even vaguely ominous. Tell people that two or three inches of snow are on the way, and you won’t find a shovel anywhere between here and Charlottesville.

While I certainly don’t advocate that you take hurricane warnings lightly, there are a few things you can do to avoid falling for the media hype and panic-mongering that inevitably accompany them.

Most newspapers and TV news operations have webpages that include hurricane maps and tracking systems. As soon as a hurricane appears to be coming our way, begin by clicking on the computer tracking models. If most of the tracking lines consistently cross Hampton Roads, by all means start plundering shelves.

In the case of Earl, however, every computer track until the day he arrived had the hurricane brushing the Outer Banks and then making a turn to the east off the Virginia coast. No computer model ever had Earl striking land in Virginia. So too the 5-day tracking models and their “cones of uncertainty.” And at no time did they predict that Earl would be a Category 5 hurricane when it reached Virginia.

Furthermore, for a week before Earl approached us, no weather predictions for Williamsburg or Toano (I relied primarily on WVEC) indicated that Earl would have much of an effect on our area. Perhaps a bit of rain with winds 10-15 mph, if that.

And that’s exactly what happened. Earl followed the computer models precisely and indeed brought us nothing but a few showers. Despite all the hype he managed to crank up, Earl was in fact a total putz.

So I didn’t raid the supermarket or buy a generator. And I thank Zeus that I don’t have to live on bread dunked in slimy canned yams for the next three weeks.