Knots

It’s a beautiful new Saturday, with a beautiful new hurricane forecast, depending on where you live. Dorian’s projected path has moved even farther away from Florida.

Right now, the GFS and ECMWF computer models are predicting maximum winds of 14 knots at my location. By that I mean the model which predicts the highest winds predicts 14 knots. The GFS model tops out at 11.

The new track is so far off the coast, you have to zoom out on the computer to see it.

As I keep saying, I don’t pay any attention to TV heads when it comes to hurricanes. They have a conflict of interest. They need to attract viewers more than they need to disseminate correct information, and they usually do what’s best for themselves. They’re still hysterical over Dorian. To watch TV and read stories, you would think Florida was doomed, when, in reality, there probably won’t be any severe weather anywhere in the state.

I took a look at the Weather Channel’s site today. If I ran the Weather Channel, I would hope my forecasters were saying things like, “Great news for Florida today. It appears very unlikely that Dorian will cause any major problems there. Keep taking reasonable precautions and watch the projected path, but be glad the outlook has improved so much.” That’s not what I’m seeing, however. They’re still fanning the flames of panic.

I saw something really disgraceful at Windy.com today. A meteorologist named Marshall Shepherd (from the Weather Channel) posted a full-blown berserker rant yesterday morning, and it’s still up on the website.

Some quotes:

Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard. The most urgently worded hurricane update.

Note the certainty. Dorian “is” going to hit, and it’s going to hit “really hard.” How can you justify that kind of propaganda, with a projected path as wide as it was when he wrote that? And aren’t these the same people who keep telling us forecasts are uncertain? How can forecasts be uncertain when a storm is definitely going to hit?

Totally unjustified.

Urgent, urgent hurricane update (Friday 7:00 am)

This probably going to be my most urgently worded update in some time.

So…wait while I try to understand this. I feel that you’re trying to be urgent here. Is that right, or am I taking something out of context?

Why would a weather professional tasked with informing the public talk like this? Is generating panic part of his job description?

Not “urgent”; “urgent, urgent.” Who writes like that?

You know what? I just remembered where else I’ve heard that.

The east coast of Florida, much of the state, and coastal GA/Carolinas face a major and life-threatening and sustained threat.

Again, from a person who has been through a bunch of storms, a hurricane is not a “life-threatening threat” unless you’re disabled or utterly irresponsible. Get into a strong building and wait a few hours. When you come out, don’t grab any downed power lines. You’ll be safe. I promise. If I’m wrong and you die, I’ll give you fifty dollars. But you have to ask for it in person.

A lot of people died in New Orleans during the Katrina mess. They died because they stayed where they were, at or below sea level, in structures that couldn’t protect them. Their mayor, who later went to prison, didn’t let President Bush help them. The feds sent buses, and they sat unused. You can still find a photo of the buses sitting in deep water. What happened in New Orleans had nothing to do with the dangers of hurricanes. It was all about unbelievably poor decisions made by politicians and private citizens who were fully informed. Hurricanes are not very dangerous to people who have even a sliver of common sense.

It’s not just possible to get complete protection from a hurricane; it’s extremely easy. Get in car. Drive to shelter. Wait. If no car, take bus or walk. Done.

You can go online and see photos and videos of cars in New Orleans, under water in front of houses. People had cars and still stayed where they were.

New Orleans has hosted generations of people who were trained by the left to depend on the government for everything. Many of them stayed home because they were afraid they wouldn’t be there to receive their welfare checks. You can look that up. Leftism trains people to be helpless, and this surely contributed to the death toll. People sat and waited for Uncle Sam to swoop in wearing a cape.

The same mentality was on display later at the Superdome and (after the Superdome’s flaws proved it unsuitable) the Astrodome, two stadiums where “survivors” were sheltered.

It’s amazing that the word “survivors” was used at the time. This is a great example of snowflakespeak. If you live through a hurricane, you’re not a “survivor.” That word should be reserved for things like shipwrecks and nuclear attacks. If you live through a hurricane, you’re really…nothing. You’re just a person who experienced a storm.

People at the stadiums fought and littered. They stole from each other. They raped and stabbed. They kept their surroundings filthy. One shot a National Guard soldier. They had to put barbed wire between the “survivors” and the National Guard, for the National Guard’s protection! The “survivors” stayed much longer than they should have. They kept complaining and demanding things long after they should have gone to work and gotten back to the affairs of normal life.

This is what social programs teach people to do. On the other side of the coin, the Japanese cleaned up after Fukushima in a few weeks, and we didn’t see angry Japanese citizens brawling in stadiums and demanding more help.

When Andrew came, I put my car in a concrete warehouse. I also protected my vehicles when other severe storms hit Miami. When Irma passed by the coast at my latitude, I put the vehicles in the garage and workshop. Do I deserve a patent or a Nobel Prize? Of course not. Even a goat is smart enough to head for shelter when it rains.

We have thunderstorms where I live. They are life-threatening…to people who stand outside waiting to be hit by lightning. I stay in the house. So far, I have survived. Life is full of risk. They key to survival is taking obvious steps to mitigate it.

I don’t know what more I can say about this. Either it’s already obvious, or you will never understand it.

I have two other significant concerns. First, the storm is projected to slow significantly once it makes landfall (overnight argh) around Monday evening or early Tuesday morning. The models then show it slowly meandering up the Peninsula, which means every Part of peninsula Florida would eventually be affected.

Every part of the peninsula would be…”affected.” Is that really a responsible way to put it? Yes, if the storm lands in Boca and then moves up to Georgia, it will at least rain everywhere on the peninsula. Some areas will get a real disaster, and others will get puddles. Isn’t a little nuance in order?

This slow meandering storm will pose a significant wind and storm threat but we could also see 2 to 3 feet of rain and life-threatening flooding.

Two to three FEET of rain? FEET? That has to be a typo. One foot would be a great deal. Hurricane Barry rained like crazy and didn’t hit two feet anywhere.

Are floods life-threatening? Yes. If you don’t evacuate or you try to travel in them. Otherwise, no.

I truly hoping people are making those inaccurate, cliche jokes next week (actually forecasts have a high degree of accuracy people just tend to remember the occasional miss like they do a rare field goal miss in a big game by a really good kicker), but there is nothing at this point that suggests that anything is going to change.

Actually, the forecast changed greatly ten hours after he published this conniption.

This mess is dated 7:00 a.m. on Friday, and by 5:00 p.m., the path was looking much better.

Was the information leading to the change unavailable to this connected Weather Channel employee, or was he just making things up?

It’s hard for me to understand how a grown male could get this emotional and lose his composure to the point where he ended up inciting panic instead of spreading information.

Here are two shots of computer models forecasters rely on. In these pictures, the storm is moving north. Try and reconcile them with, “Dorian is about to hit Florida really hard.”

This storm may actually end up farther offshore than the current forecast suggests, so “about to hit” was not a very responsible thing to say.

I just checked the 11:00 report, and Dorian’s path has, in fact, moved farther out to sea.

Here’s a great question: why is Marshall’s cry of distress still up, a day after the forecast changed? Where is the correction?

I hate to be the bearer of good tidings, but come on. Can we please take a minute and admit that the press is deliberately spreading terror?

I know things can change. I’m not stupid. They already have changed, and I’m writing about it. Right now, Dorian could start moving right toward my house at 50 mph, it could be a category 5 when it arrives, and it could sit here motionless for a week, erasing all traces of human occupation. Sure, that could happen. But shouldn’t a forecaster talk about what’s likely to happen and not obsess on the absolute worst and least likely case?

The NHC is a little less flaky, and here is what they now say:

Although the latest guidance has shifted a little bit eastward again this morning, there are still ECMWF and GFS ensemble members that do not forecast the northward turn so soon. On this basis, NHC prefers to shift the track forecast just a little bit to the right of the previous one, and the new official forecast lies along the western edge of the guidance envelope. This will allow for further adjustments in the track during future forecast cycles.

Translation: “This thing is really unlikely to hit Florida, but it could, so we are not moving the cone as far east as most models predict.”

Here is what Marshall Shepherd meant to say, I’m sure: “Dorian MIGHT hit Florida really hard, or it could blow off into the ocean and upset a bunch of shrimp.”

I guess I write like this every time a spot pops up on the weather maps, but it’s upsetting to see these people agitate the public. They’re like fire-and-brimstone preachers, screeching at the drunks in the back of the church in order to save them from hell. Their message is totally inappropriate for most of us. They treat all of us as though we were idiots. They exaggerate and threaten as if the truth wouldn’t motivate us at all.

People are reacting, Weather Channel. You can get off the soapbox now, believe me. Try buying a loaf of bread in Florida right now. Try buying bottled water. Stores are picked clean. You can relax and start telling the truth. The people who won’t prepare are never going to listen, and you’re just scaring the others.

You’re also blowing your credibility, such as it is. You blew it with me years ago. I wouldn’t trust Jim Cantore if he told me it was Saturday.

Because my dad had dementia, he was easily upset by things he saw on TV, and he really flipped out when he saw hurricane stories. I was trying to care for him, and he would badger me over and over about preparation and so on. I would reassure him, and he would forget, and I would have to do it all over again many times. The news heads know there are people who will get unnecessarily worried by their prancing and shrieking, and they do it anyway. That’s not right. They make life hard for caregivers and the people they look after, just to sell more ads. I suffered because of their thoughtlessness, and so did my dad.

It’s time for a great video classic. Remember the guy who pretended the winds were blowing him over while people walked around unconcerned behind him?

That’s Mike Seidel. Remember that name, if you insist on watching weather news. It might save you a stroke.

The Weather Channel published a ridiculous, completely dishonest defense. They said he had a hard time standing because he was tired and situated on wet grass. Okay. It’s really hard to stand on grass, isn’t it? And he had a great, yet hidden, reason for standing on something he supposedly found slick, when pavement was a few feet away.

Here’s another gem. Anderson Cooper stood in waist-high water to show how bad hurricane flooding was, while his crew filmed him from much shallower water a few feet away. The really wild thing about this is that he got indignant and tried to defend himself, making the whole situation even worse.

Why would an honest person do that? Imagine getting dressed and going to work, and having to deal with waist-deep water. Would you jump in and mess up your clothes and shoes, or would you stand on dry ground and say something like, “That water over there is waist-deep?”

Do I have to ask that?

Put down your drink before you watch this beauty. A reporter named Michelle Kosinski got in a canoe to show how deep flood waters were, and while she was talking to Matt Lauer (I will not go down that rabbit trail), a couple of guys walked by. The water was only up to their ankles. The woman put a canoe in ankle-deep water to fool the public.

It’s sad that people keep defending the panic apparatus.

If the storm comes here and gives Ocala a pounding, will it prove I’m wrong? Of course not. The nervous Nancys on TV would still be at fault for exaggerating, lying, and mischaracterizing. If their baseless predictions came true, it would just be a random thing, and we already knew that could happen.

Look at the models. Read the NHC site. Avoid TV at all costs. You can handle this just fine, because you’re not stupid. Mike Seidel and Anderson Cooper are not the kind of people you want talking to you during an emergency.

Here I am, loaded down with survival food, and the storm is becoming less of a threat by the hour.

Maybe I threw myself on that box of Pop Tarts for nothing.

UPDATE

The models now show Dorian missing Florida and Georgia entirely. One model shows it hitting South Carolina and continuing up the coast. The other shows it missing every state except for a brief blow to North Carolina.

The models predict winds in the area of 40-50 knots when the storm lands. Hurricanes start at 64 knots. Just saying.

The last measurement I saw for Dorian’s eye was 10 nautical miles. Small, small, small.