Hurricane Patricia
- Thread starter B.J.
- Start date
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Amaris
Guest
What bothers me is that I only heard about it today. I mean, that's on me of course, but I saw nothing in our news until this morning. "The most dangerous storm in history," and our news is like "oh yeah, there's a hurricane in Mexico or something."
I do hope everyone's okay, and according to CNN, rescue services are already champing at the bit to spring into action once the storm passes.
I do hope everyone's okay, and according to CNN, rescue services are already champing at the bit to spring into action once the storm passes.
CNN said:
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Amaris
Guest
Exactly! You'd imagine the most powerful storm in the Western hemisphere would make some kind of kerfluffle on the news, but nothing, or at least, not much. If I recall correctly, BillJ, I think we may have the same local news station, or at least share one.
Edit: Sustained winds of 200+ mph. That's an EF5 tornado spread out over a thousand miles. Why isn't the local news going "holy shit, are you seeing this?!"
I know you're going for a whole "Why isn't the news reporting this?" angle here, but you only heard about it today because it only just dramatically intensified yesterday. Patricia grew from a fairly mundane tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours, which is unprecedented.
So it's not a matter of the news not caring about reporting it or anything like that, it's a result of the hurricane developing so fast and so unexpectedly that no one had the resources in place to fully cover it yet, and they're playing catch-up.
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Well, that makes sense. I hope our local news station decides to cover more of it, though, because I get the feeling we're all going to see the effects of that storm, should it make it to the Gulf intact.
We're expecting flooding here in South Texas, but then again, we expect flooding here if someone so much as spits on the ground. Hubby and I stocked up on groceries for the week today, so we're set to ride it out. I don't think it will be much of a problem in our area, but you never know.
All the local stations we receive come out of Cincinnati (WLWT, WCPO, WKRC, WXIX, WCET and WSTR). I usually watch Fox 19 (WXIX) in the mornings and heard nothing about it this morning (Friday).
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Ah, yeah I watch WLWT in the morning. I think they spent a few seconds on it at best.
I went to bed expecting three days of rain and woke up to the biggest storm ever hitting south of me. You are not alone being surprised. Glad I hit the store a couple of days ago.
I'm still betting if this were headed towards NYC it wouldn't have caught them off guard because they'd be triple checking it. It's sensationalism and it's sick. Unless you are bent on world destruction, a country deserves every chance to avoid these natural disasters since we have tools to minimize loss of life now.
Yeah, because Hurricane Sandy's extreme damage didn't catch anyone off-guard in the New York area.
And Sandy followed a much more predictable path and pattern of development than the unprecedented Hurricane Patricia has.So it's "sick sensationalism" for them to allegedly downplay a storm? How does that make any sense? You can't sensationalize something by being caught off guard by it and not covering it (which, by the way, they are covering it).
Again, the reason they weren't covering it on the news earlier was not because of journalistic negligence or because the storm wasn't being monitored by the various international weather agencies. It was. The storm literally intensified from a mid-level tropical storm to a massive Category 5 hurricane overnight, faster than any storm on record. There has to be a story before you can cover it.
Speaking of record breaking, the storm again broke records by being downgraded by a Category 5 hurricane back to a tropical depression overnight again as it moved across Central Mexico, faster than any storm has dissipated before. I can't emphasize enough what a bizarre and unprecedented storm this is, though this kind of record breaking intensity and unusually erratic storm behavior will unfortunately become all the more common as the effects of climate change start to take a toll, so we should anticipate more of this in the future.
We like to act as if meteorologists should predict the future, but they're not PreCogs. When a storm behaves in a completely unpredictable way and changes form so rapidly, even they can be caught off-guard. But they still got the word out via alerts and the media as soon as possible and that, combined with the highest winds of the storm fortunately being confined to a fairly small, mostly rural area, fortunately limited casualties.
Look, I'm all for criticizing he media for journalistic negligence, sensationalism, and a lack of ethics, but their coverage of Hurricane (now tropical depression) Patricia hasn't fit that bill. Nor does trying to create some narrative that they don't care because it's Mexico rather than the US. Given our close social and economic ties to Mexico (and the tourist resorts on the Pacific coast) and the number of former Mexican citizens or their descendants living in the US, it's a very important media demographic to cover, especially in the South-west / South-central US. Also, the media will never pass up the chance to cover a huge hurricane if offered.
It's quite the storm. Looks like it hit slightly less severely than expected, but I imagine it'll be a while before we know the full scope of the damage.
A related idle question, if anyone knows the answer: if we had the underwater hydroelectric turbines "they" have been talking about putting in the Gulf, would this be a power production boon, or would it just tear hell out of 'em?
Rained all day today, but so far, nothing too bad happening outside. If tomorrow goes well, we should avoid the more severe flooding, at least in my part of the area.
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I'm really glad the storm fell apart as rapidly as it did. I'm always worried about you guys in Texas, Oklahoma, and so on because those storms just like to tap dance all through that area.
