Media is over-hyping Irene

[Flipperk]

Hindsight 20/20 is a beautiful thing isn't it?  It could have been much stronger.

Even a cat 1 storm with winds in the realm of 70-80 mph is still going to do a lot of damage.

Not as much as you think, lived in a trailer home during many strong tropical storms and weak cat 1s...nothing more than a few branches.


I am not surprised it weakened as much as it did...Once you get passed the Carolina's the water temperature is too cold to sustain any real storm.

[mbailey]

Big problem with this storm is the amount of rain, the NE (at least in SE PA and NJ) are already recovering from record August rains. The ground is saturated and cant hold any more at this point. (we got 8" around here in the last 2 weeks, and 20+ for the month)  Another 5 to 8 inches of rain is going to result in massive flooding, couple that with some wind, and tree roots that will no longer support the tree, and its a recipie for disaster. I got claims last week (15+) resulting from trees on houses from just small thunderstorms that have come thru, minor winds caused many trees to fall on houses due to the saturated ground. One of which resulted in the death of a 15mo old child. I also have 40+ homes (claims) where some larger thunderstorms ripped roofs up, and have structures that are already damaged or unstable. (and im just one adjuster, for one company)

The company I work for already has our hurricane teams coming up from the gulf states, and trust me when i say they dont spend millions of dollars to open up Catastrophy offices for something that is going to be "minor"  

All that said, I hope im absolutely wrong, and that this whole thing is going to be nothing.............ultimatel y i dont think it will though.

Personally i cant stand the media, but when it comes to the possibility of people being hurt, or worse killed, It would be irresponsible of them not to provide all the information they can. If just 1 life is saved due to the "hype" then in my eyes its worth it.

[Muzzy]

WHAT? the media is OVER-HYPING something?  That never happens! Ever!!!!

[Muzzy]

Then again, I'd rather they over hype than under hype a natural disaster.  Really, is too much warning worse than no warning at all?

[Reaper90]

Hindsight 20/20 is a beautiful thing isn't it?  It could have been much stronger.

Even a cat 1 storm with winds in the realm of 70-80 mph is still going to do a lot of damage.

LOL. Hindsight my arse. We were directly in its projected path on Wednesday and it was a cat 3 at that time with the possibility of getting even stronger. And we had no plans to evacuate. I've ridden out cat 4 and cat 5 hurricanes before. With it being a cat 1 or 2, LOL, if you're running inland.... go ahead and panic over nothing!  

Like I said, unless I live directly on the beach (within 1 mile of water) or in the swamp (we have a tremendous amount of land around here that is only 8-10 feet above sea level, and the Waccamaw River runs right through the center of town, so flooding is a big deal, as with Hurricane Floyd), I'm not leaving. The mass of people leaving due to over-hyped hysteria is as much of a problem as the storm itself is.

[CAP1]

So it's a Cat 1 now, eh? Run for the hills, fellas, it's the end of times! 

 also....i am in the civil air patrol. we are tasked with emergency services, just as police, fire fighters, etc. it is in our(and everyone involved) best interest to prepare for the worst. it's what we train for. we do what we do better than anyone else. we take pride in what we do. ask any other cap member here on the bbs.

[CAP1]

LOL. Hindsight my arse. We were directly in its projected path on Wednesday and it was a cat 3 at that time with the possibility of getting even stronger. And we had no plans to evacuate. I've ridden out cat 4 and cat 5 hurricanes before. With it being a cat 1 or 2, LOL, if you're running inland.... go ahead and panic over nothing!  

Like I said, unless I live directly on the beach (within 1 mile of water) or in the swamp (we have a tremendous amount of land around here that is only 8-10 feet above sea level, and the Waccamaw River runs right through the center of town, so flooding is a big deal, as with Hurricane Floyd), I'm not leaving. The mass of people leaving due to over-hyped hysteria is as much of a problem as the storm itself is.

 i didn't say i ran inland. i live there.

 what would you think would happen, if they/we brushed this off, as a non-event, and by some freak of nature, it turned west, made landfall, and caused large numbers of deaths, and massive devastation? what do you think would happen? you know as well as any of us, that it's not impossible. improbable, yes....but not impossible. i wouldn't want to be the person that said don't worry, when it hit.........just sayin. 

[Flipperk]

i didn't say i ran inland. i live there.

 what would you think would happen, if they/we brushed this off, as a non-event, and by some freak of nature, it turned west, made landfall, and caused large numbers of deaths, and massive devastation? what do you think would happen? you know as well as any of us, that it's not impossible. improbable, yes....but not impossible. i wouldn't want to be the person that said don't worry, when it hit.........just sayin.  

The present weather currents make it impossible for this storm to turn west.

And Cap, I would like to thank you for your duty in CAP. I would like to extend a big salute to you sir!



Being prepared for the worse is always a good idea, but when do you draw the line for that? Are we going to mobilize and evacuate everytime we have a massive thunderstorm?

[grizz441]

LOL. Hindsight my arse. We were directly in its projected path on Wednesday and it was a cat 3 at that time with the possibility of getting even stronger. And we had no plans to evacuate.

At that time, there was still uncertainty of whether its path would deviate and there was still adequate time to "wait a little longer" to see if the path changed.

I'm just glad you guys aren't in charge of population safety, there'd be a lot of fatalities.

My heart also bleeds for the New Englanders that have to evacuate  once every 20 years due to the threat of a potential monster storm. 

[Flipperk]

At that time, there was still uncertainty of whether its path would deviate and there was still adequate time to "wait a little longer" to see if the path changed.

I'm just glad you guys aren't in charge of population safety, there'd be a lot of fatalities.

My heart also bleeds for the New Englanders that have to evacuate  once every 20 years due to the threat of a potential monster storm.  

In a earlier post I said we had to evacuate due to Ike and Katrina, I meant Ike and Rita.


During Hurricane Rita we had to evacuate, only 7 people died DIRECTLY related to the Hurricane...90 people out of the 113 indirect deaths died due to the evacuation we had in Houston.

This is from National Geographic concerning why people didn't want to evacuate during Ike:

"Some probably refused to leave because they'd been caught in the chaotic evacuation for Hurricane Rita in 2005, he said.

During that event, roads out of Houston became gridlocked. Officials later estimated that about 90 people died during the 2005 evacuation because of heatstroke, dehydration, and other causes. "

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080926-hurricane-ike-evacuation.html





So as you can see, sometimes trying to be safe than sorry goes horribly wrong...who is to blame then? When you evacuate a large area you are going put everyone at a greater risk because they are now exposed. Not only to the weather, but also to eachother...when you have almost a million people trying to get away at once...bad things happen, especially when they panic.

[Reaper90]

i didn't say i ran inland. i live there.

Wasn't commenting to you specifically, CAP.

what would you think would happen, if they/we brushed this off, as a non-event, and by some freak of nature, it turned west, made landfall, and caused large numbers of deaths, and massive devastation? what do you think would happen? you know as well as any of us, that it's not impossible. improbable, yes....but not impossible. i wouldn't want to be the person that said don't worry, when it hit.........just sayin. 

Even if it was to "turn west" magically, please explain how a Cat 1 hurricane could "cause large numbers of deaths, and massive devastation?"

[Reaper90]

At that time, there was still uncertainty of whether its path would deviate and there was still adequate time to "wait a little longer" to see if the path changed.

I'm just glad you guys aren't in charge of population safety, there'd be a lot of fatalities.

FAIL. Using common sense in the face of a storm like this one is not going to put anyone's safety at risk.

Big storm does not always equal strong storm. A cat 2 is a cat 2, no matter how big it looks on a satellite photo. Mass hysteria not warranted. Try again, please.

[Flipperk]

FAIL. Using common sense in the face of a storm like this one is not going to put anyone's safety at risk.

Big storm does not always equal strong storm. A cat 2 is a cat 2, no matter how big it looks on a satellite photo. Mass hysteria not warranted. Try again, please.

Reaper, a large storm can cause a massive storm surge...it is not the cat rating that decides that, it is the size and speed of it.  If you live near the coast this would be your main concern. While this storm does not have a big surge, do not shrug off a large storm just because of its' category.

[icepac]

This pic is just after hurricane fran went through raleigh so being inland can still be dangerous.



Hurricane wilma made landfall and traveled across florida before hitting us in West Palm Beach and I remember seeing roofs coming off of buildings and finding a no parking sign embedded into a tree in my front yard.

I remember riding out hurricane agnes which was supposed to be weak and it really messed up jersey.

Hurricane charley was a quick and nasty hurricane with very little rainfall but it broke a lot of trees and buildings in orlando where I lived.

I was in west palm for Jeanne and Frances and they were'nt nearly as strong but jeanne dropping 11 inches of rain and frances dropping 14 inches was far worse than the wind damage.

Wilma was much like charley except the eye was huge which allowed us to go outside and quickly reattach the electrical service to our house that had been ripped out by a falling tree before the storm kicked back up.

I also did a quick drive around locally during the eye and was amazed to see the huge amount of morons entering I95 because they thought the storm was over.

Those guys had to ride out the second half of the storm stuck in traffic.

Hurricanes are also unpredictable.

[CAP1]

The present weather currents make it impossible for this storm to turn west.

And Cap, I would like to thank you for your duty in CAP. I would like to extend a big salute to you sir!



Being prepared for the worse is always a good idea, but when do you draw the line for that? Are we going to mobilize and evacuate everytime we have a massive thunderstorm?

 i understand it's impossible.....my point is/was "what if?" i wouldn't want to be the governer if i didn't do what's being done, and we got hammered.

 i appreciate that....but i don't do anything special, in my opinion.....at least not compared to the men and women that wear the uniform, and serve.

 i think that for whatever reason, they were pretty positive that cape may county was gonna take a direct hit. that was as of last wed. it looks now, like it's going to be about 20-30 miles off the coast. that's going to still hit the coastal regions with heavy winds, and driven rain. we've had record rain this month, meaning the ground is saturated, and soft......so any tree could potentially become a missile, or just fall over.

 even if this totally missed us, there are many positives to the fact that we all did this. just within cap for example.......it tested our training, it tested our comms, our chain of command, and will have exposed our weak links. i personally dealt with 2 of those weak links, which will be brought to light in my AAR next week.

 i'm pretty proud to be able to call my fellow cap members my friends too.

 i think gov. christie may have been replaced by a pod person. he's on the radio right now, and not sounding his normal "gruff" self.