I’m writing this in the middle of Hurricane Florence. Okay, not really. There have been a few bouts of high wind and an ass-load of rain, but overall it appears more in line with a severe thunderstorm than a life-threatening hurricane. Not to diminish what’s happening at the coast, they’re getting pounded. But here in central North Carolina it’s a bit of a far cry from what we were expecting. Or, at least, what we were told to expect.
I’ve been tracking this thing all week just out of sheer curiosity. I’m not a prepper or a worrier. I figure that if something is going to rip through my area and destroy houses and uproot trees and I get caught in the path, it was just meant to be. Buying bread and batteries and water doesn’t keep Mother Nature at bay. It’s just more crap to lose in a flood. I also have nowhere to go, so riding it out is an inevitability.
It started out as a category five and was projected to roll straight through NC, from the coast to the mountains. But with every subsequent day it appeared to get weaker. And all the forecasters kept telling us to ignore the declining categories and instead focus on the storm surges. If the storm surges are the most important part, then why do we even have categories? Then by the end of the week it had become a category two and was going to now hit the coast, move south, and curve back northwest, basically sending the storm around us. We’re basically getting the edge of a tropical storm at this point.
But man did they spend the week projecting the apocalypse. It worked. People ransacked the grocery stores and the gas pumps. The only thing I was worried about was getting my yard mowed so that the damn grass wouldn’t be knee-high by the time the storm passed. It just seems to me like the media wanted Florence to be the next Katrina or Harvey, which is a terrible thing to want because those were catastrophic events. Do you really want some hurricane leveling NC just so you’ll have something to write about? So you can get that ad revenue from them website clicks? Disgusting intentions.
And now I’m watching the LSU-Auburn game and every commercial break these local news clowns come on the air to tell me it’s still raining outside. Solid journalism.