Good Night (Hurricane) Irene!

picture from noaa.gov

So, yesterday I explored the topic of hype, honing in on hype in weather forecasting, and specifically Hurricane Irene. I laid out a “hype vs. outcome chart” and stated that I could talk myself into being OK with the hype about Hurricane Irene in general.

picture from philly.com

So now we enter the dangerous “hind-sight being 20/20” territory – which is dangerous in my opinion and I’ll go into that later. from what I’ve read, the storm weakened a little more than expected, the winds were not as high as expected or lasted as long as expected, the rain wasn’t quite as much as expected, and the storm moved faster than expected. Not to say that there wasn’t a lot of rain and wind, and not to say that there weren’t problems, or that there still won’t be…but…in terms of the hype vs. outcome chart… 

HURRICANE IRENE	Best Case Scenario (little damage)	Worst Case Scenario (massive damage)
Hype?	Inconvenience	Hopefully minimized because of the hype
No Hype?	No harm no foul	Are we mourning the unprepared?

…I’d say this Hurricane ended up in the section highlighted in green.

And now, there’s a small undercurrent (pun intended) of outrage over whether the storm was over-hyped or not. So, I have two generic questions in reaction to the outrage.

First, what was so important about last night that was missed because everyone hunkered down? There may be the one-off exceptions of an once-in-a-lifetime event that was postponed because of this; and by once-in-a-lifetime, I mean weddings and funerals, not sports events, dinners out, concerts, etc. And second, what was the real alternative? Everyone goes about their business, and they we have a storm that strengthened a little more than expected, the winds were higher than expected and lasted longer as expected, the rain was more than expected, and the storm moved slower than expected? And then we end up in the red-highlighted section of the chart?

We’re now second-guessing the hype of the storm because we’ve seen what it ended up being. Since we know now what we didn’t know then, some of us are saying that the hype should have been dialed back. The problem I have with this statement is this:  we DIDN’T know then what we know now. And there was no way of absolutely KNOWING then what we know now. Mother Nature is truly unpredictable, in the pure definition of that word. And although scientifically patterns have been studied and comparisons have been made, at the end of the day, no one can accurately, exactly, unmistakably predict the future. We can never KNOW then what we know NOW. 

And so, in hindsight, I stand by my comment from yesterday’s post:  with the memories of Hurricane Katrina still fresh in everyone’s minds, maybe this time, I am OK with the hype surrounding Hurricane Irene.

But…I will say this as a final note:  there are certain parts of weather forecasting where forecasters heavily imply that their experience, or their technology, in fact CAN accurately predict the future. And THAT I have a problem with. There is a certain weather forecaster in the Philly area, who wears a certain clip-on bow tie, who’s self-proclaimed nickname, used on air, is  the type of storm Irene was, who is guilty of this heavy implication. And I’m sure other cities have their one over-the-top weatherperson (I'm looking at you, Al Roker!), that in my opinion bring this kind of outrage onto themselves.     

What’s the answer? As with most things:  take what you hear, apply some thought, some common sense, filter out the extreme, and chances are everything will be OK.