Where Left Is Right / The Old Site

Well, it's that time of year here in Florida. You know the time of year I mean:

• The season stretches from June 1 through October 31.
• Unwanted visitors, now dubbed with either female or male names, arrive from all directions.
• These visitors assault our coasts with damaging wind.
• They cause untold damage, especially to people's long-term psychological health as well as to assets important to the tourism industry.

I'm speaking, of course, of The Weather Channel's on-the-scene hurricane teams.

There's something ineffably scary, of course, in knowing that people used to have no idea that a hurricane was bearing down upon them. Many people nowadays -- ever since the first high-altitude images were printed and broadcast in mass media around the world -- have probably become jaded by the swirling white cinnamon buns of storm clouds shown every day (especially in the summer) on weather maps and satellite photos. But there was a time when people had no advance warning at all -- especially in the days before ship-to-shore communications. That people ever settled and remained in tropical coastal areas is a tribute, some would say, to the enduring human spirit. Others would ascribe it to less noble truths, like the enduring human stupidity.

In any case, by now the pendulum of warning has swung waaaaay forward, in the direction of providing Too Much Information (TMI).

It's easy enough not to turn on the TV of course. Or, having turned it on, not to click over to The Weather Channel. But hope springs eternal: "Maybe this time," the optimistic viewer says to himself, "they'll just tell me what to expect -- where the storm is right now, in what direction and how fast it's moving, and where and when it will be someplace else. Without histrionics."

I remember in New York, back in the mid-1980s, a TV weatherman named Lloyd Lindsay Young. (He's evidently now on radio in San Francisco.) He used to make me a little crazy, perhaps because he seemed more than a little crazy himself. During one broadcast, I remember him practically screaming, "Look at that!" as he slapped with the back of his hand at the image on the screen behind him. "Look at it! Look at that barometric pressure!"

But these people can't stop there. They're not just weather enthusiasts, they're weather addicts -- they can't get enough of it, and the worse the stuff is, the more they're willing to pay to get it. They evidently won't stop, either, until we, their viewers, are toking maniacally from the same pipe.

Among the awful images presented to us during last year's awful hurricane season, one stood out as being worth the sight. That was the one in which a traffic sign, ripped from its moorings, smashed into one of the young women "field meteorologists" in harm's way down on the Atlantic Coast. (She wasn't seriously injured, although she made much of the bandages in later broadcasts, and that was good because otherwise this would have to be reported as a tragedy rather than a comedy in retrospect.)

Despite the woman's injury, that's what they love to show, y'know: damage. It may not be damage visited -- or ever likely to be visited -- upon you and your neighbors. But by God, they want you to know that nothing's certain in this world and you better be prepared for the world to end.

The scene in local home-supply and department stores, 48 hours before a major storm is even within a couple hundred miles of the (ha, ha) Sunshine State -- that scene is almost Biblically apocalyptic. People pushing shopping carts and those big open dollies full of batteries, bottled water, canned food, roofing nails, rolled plastic sheeting, duct tape, flashlights, propane canisters, 20-pound bags of charcoal, coolers, bags of ice, plywood and wooden slats, fire extinguishers, chicken wire, portable generators, red plastic gasoline containers, candles and matches, film and (these days) digital photo cards for recording the after-effects... And there's always the little, revealing human touch, too: The guy with a basket-load of paperback thrillers; the one evaluating competing powdered margarita mixes, his brow furrowed; the college student, clearly from someplace with more civil weather, trying to decide if tiki torches and lantern oil might come in handy; the woman looking back and forth between a gallon of spring water in one hand, and a gallon of distilled water in the other; the elderly cashier with the worried eyes who asks you, as you fumble with your credit card, if you've heard the latest and if so, can you please share it with her...

The point is this: The Weather Channel doesn't need to scare us. Yes, of course, people need to be warned. They need to watch the skies, especially with the help of The Weather Channel's (and NOAA's and others') undoubtedly informative and beautifully computer-enhanced images. They need to have supplies on hand, and to prepare themselves for the interruption of essential services like electricity and water.

What people don't need is a bombardment of ever-more alarming reports from shouting jackasses in windbreakers, leaning into the wind and rain as floodwaters rise around their ankles and houses and cars tumble by in the background. They don't need it for themselves, and their distant families and friends -- unfamiliar with the relevant geographic scales, and thus unaware (for instance) that a hurricane's likely landfall is hundreds of miles away -- sure as hell don't need it either.