So here in South Florida we are preparing for Tropical Storm Bonnie. The windy babe should start hitting us sometime in the next couple of hours and this is the forecast for tomorrow according to the National Weather Service:
Friday: Tropical storm conditions possible. Rain and possibly a thunderstorm. Some of the storms could produce gusty winds and heavy rain. High near 88. Heat index values as high as 101. East wind 28 to 33 mph, with gusts as high as 47 mph. Chance of precipitation is 80%.
While nothing to sneeze about, South Florida is pretty much well set up for a small, medium or large size Tropical Storm. I don’t think most of us bothers with shutters unless we are guaranteed a Cat 1 Hurricane with winds close to 85 mph and then only because it is too complicated to deal with the damn panels. Flooding will be the issue mostly because we are flat and water has pretty much nowhere to run to once the canals are at full capacity. Since May, everybody from the Mayor to the any of the street vendors between Calle Ocho and Flagler Street, keep remind us about hurricane preparations. Some more than others are prepared for them following the trifecta of beans, bullets and band-aids and have become experts at following storm paths and analyzing radar returns, infra red water vapor satellite images and keeping an eye on the seagulls to see if the show up all of the sudden west of I-75.
The collective of our local Channel 7 is losing their ever loving minds with this storm. If you pay any more than five seconds of attention to their broadcast, you swear that Andrew and Katrina are pissed off and about to pay us a nasty visit. And of course, there is the fringe of idiots that will go nuts and actually believe we are going to have Armageddon Part 2 so they rush out to buy everything off the shelves because they heard the “news.” By Sunday afternoon they will be trying to figure out what they are going to do with 500 hot dogs with corresponding buns, 10 cases of Sams Cola, one metric ton of self starting charcoal and the three cases of Captain Morgan (You can’t have a Florida weather event without rum or at least a decent amount of related spirits and I am not exaggerating about the hot dogs, I saw that once.)
This type of news are counter productive. I am all for preparations and being forewarned, but doing a Chicken Little Live On The Scene only serves for people to ignore future and possibly dangerous events. People get tired of wasting time, money and peace of mind for some heavy rains and a gust of wind. So my dear friends in Channel 7 News, chill out and STFU.
Since losing power for a couple of days might be a possibility, I might be forced to take a little vacation from the blog. I’ll see you guys on the other side!
Update: I was afraid that our Saturday IDPA match might be canceled, but this just got posted in our club’s forum.
The storm should be well past us by Friday night.
So—- it will be sweet and clean after the rain……
Come on out on Saturday so you can practice for the looters.
DVC
Roger
Oh dear Lord, don’t get me started on people who lose their minds anytime the winds blow. Like the time the CNN weather crew went over the Mid-Bay Bridge during a hurricane in a Humvee.
Let me clarify why this was stupid: they went over a ship channel on a bridge in a hurricane in a vehicle that’s DESIGNED TO SINK.
[…] don’t raise a fuss, Much less yammer like a stupid cuss Like the dolts on the TV Who’ve let loose their wee-wee- They insist that we leave on a […]
The Northern equivalent is the news people in Chicago who freak out when they are predicting 2″ of snow. They go into this “Emergency Weather” mode. I want to scream at them “Look, it’s Chicago, it snows every f’ing year”
Seriously, this year at the SHOT Show in Vegas, it rained all week and the weather guys there went into “Emergency Rain” mode. It wasn’t flooding, it was Raining.
Sheesh…