This doesn’t surprise me. The weather people/media make a huge event out of every cluster of thunderstorms during hurricane season. People are burned out on the ‘sky is falling’reports and no longer take every warning of oncoming death and destruction seriously.
Used to be the hype was reserved only for the serious hurricanes, now they are tracking them from birth off Africa and after 2 weeks of hearing about Hurricane Hepsibah or something people tune it out. They also sensationalize every storm too much. We didn’t panic for every tropical storm or minor hurricane when I was growing up- now people consider ANYTHING the NWS names a potential catastrophe. People simply can’t AFFORD to run from every tropical system.
Look, I’ve been through Betsy- tons in between- and Katrina, I accept the eventual erasure of S. La by a hurricane. Nature will win, we are geologically and meteorologically doomed. New Orleans is a unique problem- no one should reside here permanently during hurricane season-period. It’s not like other coastal areas that hurricanes hit.
I won’t be here when a big one comes- and those who are don’t get any sympathy from me.
But it also makes me CRAZY to hear people compare the threat of hurricanes on our coastlines to ‘weather’ elsewhere in the country. There is no comparison UNLESS and UNTIL mass evacuations are called for tornadoes and blizzards. The psychological factor isn’t the same. Blizzards can be prepared for and survived with your home intact. You don’t see a million people fleeing in frantic panic before one. And tornadoes are too fast and isolated to have the same effect over a long period of time- as watching storm after storm during hurricane season.
Running- and preparing to run- from your home, over and over again, is no way to live. A tornado is horrific, but it can hit your neighbor and miss you. A hurricane like Katrina affects millions at once.
No comparison.
I’d gladly trade places with anyone in blizzard country- which is where I plan to be when N.O. is finally part of the Gulf of Mexico.
“There is no comparison UNLESS and UNTIL mass evacuations are called for tornadoes and blizzards.”
A mass evacuation doesn’t have to happen for people to be effected.
Tornadoes? It destroyed the next town over, three summers ago. Husband and I WATCHED it pass by our Back Forty on it’s way...that was close enough for me.
How about the tornado that wiped out an entire town in Oklahoma about five years back?
How about the fires that eat up the countryside in the West each season, burning homes and businesses and ruining lives?
Blizzards? Ice Storm of 1976. No power for weeks; we were all trapped in our homes. Dad broke out the BBQ grill in the middle of it all and started cooking up all the meat going to waste in everyone’s freezers. We lived like kings, LOL!
The smaller weather problems don’t get the coverage that the big ones do, but they still happen, and people still die...or live through them and carry on WITHOUT Government help or the MSM singing their praises for doing so.