The problem is not that people second guessed the severity of this storm; rather, they second-guessed the MSM and govt warnings, which is what happens when these media and govt attention whores over-hype every weather event.
Yes, Sandy's impact on relatively small, but densely populated areas is no doubt severe and epic. But as of Sunday afternoon, the MSM was pimping for viewership by hyping death and destruction for a 900 mile-wide path stretching from Maine to Virginia to the Canadian border. The reality, however, is that when Sandy finally blows out of the area, the vast majority of that 900 mile swath will have suffered a mild to moderate rain event with a few gusts of wind on par with a mid-summer thunderstorm. Many of us will have lost electricity for a few hours or perhaps a few days and some us will have suffered flooded streets and basements, neither of which is all that unusual in July or in January.
To put things in perspective, as a result of the media hype, all the local schools and govt offices where I live in the northern NYC suburbs, decided on Sunday morning (if not earlier) to close on Monday, even though by Sunday afternoon, the models uniformly showed that Sandy would make landfall in southern New Jersey, nearly 200 miles away. Some local governments even declared a state of emergency 24 hours before the first few raindrops and gusts of wind. Workers stayed home, businesses shut down, millions of dollars were sucked out of the local economy. Yet as a storm, Sandy dumped a whopping .31 inches of rain in the area and whipped up a few 60 mph wind gusts. Except for the media hype that shut down the local economy, Sandy's impact was less than a severe summer squall.
This is at least the fifth time in the last three years that the MSM has hyped a weather event that failed to live up tp the hype. Cry wolf often enough and the people stop listening.
Have you even LOOKED at what’s going on a bit to the South of you - STILL at this hour??? I’m happy for you that it’s not worse. You should feel LUCKY, not self-righteous.
Sunday made a sudden move yesterday and landed in Delaware Bay and for 200 miles either side ~ that was a surprise to those of us South of the expected zone ~ so, no, ‘they’ hadn’t decided that it wasn’t going to show up in NYC.