Hurricane Irene and the Aftermath

Last weekend we all prepared to be blown away by Hurricane Irene. The weather forecasters told us that this time there was little to no chance of the storm veering out to sea as the last couple close storms have. New York City was said to be in the path of the storm and potential devastation could take place. The storm itself while powerful with winds in the one hundred mile an hour range was certainly not a monstrous storm in terms of wind speed but any storm that hits New York the right way can cause a diaster of epic proportions.

Now as we sit here a few days out from the event we know that New York City was for the most part spared. However criticism of the media and weather forecasters is not fair. Should they have missed a potentially dangerous storm or downplayed it they would be crucified. Surely weathermen in Maine know that the one way to boost ratings in the winter is to talk about a large storm approaching later in the week. If it does not happen you still have had people watching.

Here in Maine there are still forty thousand people without power. That is not a large number unless you are one of those forty thousand and then it is a very serious thing to be without power three days later. Surprisingly the wind and rain on the backside of the storm caused widespread devastation in landlocked Vermont. There are still many communities in Vermont that are stranded without power and unable to be accessed. They are literally airlifting food in. Like Berlin. Consider this before you criticize too heavily the forecasts from last week.

Michelle Bachman has said that this was God warning us to be prepared or Glenn Beck or both but I think God probably has bigger issues on his mind than if we have bottled water and canned food in the cellar.

We should be prepared, the weather is getting wackier and wackier and though here in Maine we are protected from much of it one never knows that the next event will be. I know this, if the weatherman told me there was a 1 in 5 chance of a direct hit of a hurricane I would be glad to have the warning, I would not complain when it did not.

Perhaps only in America would we complain about having a means to know about storms long before they arrived and then complain about being warned too often and too much. I suspect the folks in Galveston would have liked to have known when they woke up that there was a storm approaching.