Hurricane ammo

When I was making a living on newspaper work, my editor in Norfolk would sometimes call or e-mail this time of year and ask: “Got your bullet ready?”

The reference was to Barney Fife, Sheriff Andy Taylor’s deputy, who kept one bullet in his shirt pocket until he needed it. I’m quite sure that Barney never had occasion to shoot anyone on “The Andy Griffith Show.”

But the question had a serious side. He was looking for my take on whether the latest weather disturbance in the Atlantic was worth worrying about.

He knew I was obsessive about tropical systems. I had, and still have, a slew of bookmarks for keeping track of them on the Internet.

OK, I know how to read some of the computer models. And I sometimes lurk on a weather blog where the tone turns weirdly hopeful when a “blob” materializes on satellite views. If things get too enthusiastic, someone usually reminds the bloggers that people are hurt, displaced and die in hurricanes.

Hurricanes are serious business, and I’m superstitious about even discussing them. Downplaying a storm or maintaining a sense of perspective, even humor, is an invitation for a freak Category 5. Maybe it’s better to be hysterical and safe than calm and sorry.

Which is probably why when one threatens, we are often bombarded with dire predictions and doomsday scenarious. Understating the threat and putting people at risk would be a far more egregious error than overstating it and looking silly. It’s a news story where exaggeration might be considered a public service.

Storm coverage has become a form of show business, too. It’s a good bet that ground zero is wherever the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantore is assigned. Of course, it’s hard to convince yourself to board up and top off the tank to evacuate when people are mugging for the camera at a celebrity sighting.

One year, as a hurricane approached, a newsreel highlight was a Kill Devil Hills hotel where a piece of siding had blown off. You’d have thought the building was ready to collapse. It’s still there.

False alarms don’t help us prepare for the real threats. Hurricanes Floyd in 1999 and Isabel in 2003 should be etched in our memories. Those were fearsome major hurricanes in the Atlantic, and even though they had diminished by the time they got here, they still caused great damage and deaths.

So as the peak of the hurricane season approaches, I’d recommend two things. Pray that there is not a real doomsday scenario. And keep up with reports from Dare County Emergency Management. You won’t be entertained with breathless predictions, but you will get facts to make sensible decisions.

The National Hurricane Center website www.nhc.noaa.gov is good, too, with easy-to-read maps and graphics. There are a lot of satellite views, too. Sometimes the discussions are technical, but you generally get a more clinical, matter-of-fact assessment.

And, of course, there’s the “the cone of uncertainty,” which pretty much says it all when it comes to figuring out tropical systems.

This column originally appeared in The Virginian-Pilot.

NOAA photo.

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