An open letter to my loved ones…
Dear Northerner,
Sigh.
Let’s get a few things straight about hurricanes. Again. (Don’t we do this every year?)
1) Hurricanes, also known as tropical cyclones, are very intense summer storms. I take the threat of a hurricane very seriously and do not expect my life would remain unchanged in one’s wake. A category five storm would forever change my life as I know it.
2) That said, let’s all be real here, OK? Simply naming a storm does not imbue it with hurricane-strength winds. I am sick to the teeth (what does that MEAN?) of the civilized (and I use that term VERY lightly) world stumbling all over itself every time the National Hurricane Center (NHC) names a storm. The NHC, a division of NOAA (the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) names any storm that has winds of 35 mph. There is a big- and I’m talkin’ HUGE- difference between 35 and 135. So you’ll understand why a named storm doesn’t necessarily send me scurrying into the nearest bathtub with all my worldly good wrapped in Ziplocs. 35 isn’t a storm; it’s an EXCELLENT day sailing.
3)Maybe, perhaps, POSSIBLY the guys at Bays News 9 and every other Florida news station need to keep us watching with dramatic predictions that they exaggerated for their own ends, like selling ads and boosting ratings.
4) Also, the local news guys chief qualifications may just be “looking good in front of the camera” and they PROBABLY dosn’t know as much as the NOAA scientists.
That said, I went to Disney yesterday and got so rainsoaked that I’m just now drying out. But it was COOL, no lines at the Magic Kingdom. We literally walked on to every ride. The only down side is that it seems as though my Crocs were not designed to play nicely with some Disney concrete (very slippery). What’s a broken leg worth at the Lawsuit – I mean Magic – Kingdom?
