It’s 6 AM on a Friday morning and I’m sitting comfortably with a cup of coffee, counting my blessings. We’ve had a foot of rain here so far, and all that water is going where it’s supposed to go and not into our basement.
At the moment, there are at least 2 million people without power from Florida to the Carolinas. So far, there are no trees down here in the cove. The road hasn’t washed out. The lights are still on. I don’t have to climb a pole or ride a bucket in a downpour to restore someone’s power. Someone else is sacrificing their comfort and risking their safety to hazard the storm so the rest of us can sleep in or drink coffee and speculate. There is much to be thankful for.
We watch network news so infrequently that when there is a weather event we want to monitor, we have to download an app for the Roku. Most of the time, all the weather information I need is gleaned from a glance at the radar app: Is it raining? Is the rain headed in my direction?
Today was different, and there is a clue to generational change in the previous paragraph: “a weather event we want to monitor.” There is a vast difference between the time when we got our weather information from the newspaper (or looking out the window) and today’s collaborative events where we “monitor” the situation in real-time with weather apps, websites, 24-hour news channels (or all of these at once), and then compare notes with other participants on social media.
Technology brings mixed blessings. Statistically, we are safer because of it. The three-day forecast now is as accurate as the one-day forecast in the 1970s. The average fatality rate for a hurricane then was 20, and now, even with a greater population, that number is around 6. The same is true for tornadoes, as the average annual death rate has decreased from around 100 to about 70.
On the other hand, the constant talk, the hype, the barrage of “breaking news,” and repetitive coverage also brings heightened anxiety, information overload, sleep disruption and mental fatigue, fear and panic—and we’re just talking about weather here, not to mention all the other bits of falling sky that we have to weather when there isn’t a weather event to endure.
The sky is lightening now, and the rain has paused for the moment. The weather guy on the television is explaining again how a rotating tropical system causes rotating bands of rain to rotate. There’s that video again of the car driving through the puddle, and the creek out of its banks.
Our little network of neighbors has already begun to check in. We were lucky. We are blessed. Our sharpened chainsaws, fueled and ready, will probably sit idle for another day. Perhaps some of the groceries we saw streaming out of town in heavy traffic will be used to celebrate our collective good fortune, while about 3,600 people without power in our area will be glad they were forewarned in time to prepare.
It was a tragic event for many, and at the time of this writing, the floodwaters are still rising, but it could have been much worse for Georgia. The weather guy is now explaining how the water is deeper where the road dips down. Too much information, perhaps, and the information always gets deeper where the recliner dips down as well. I think it’s time to get up.
Outside The Box 