Isn’t Life Strange?

Some of you may have heard that right now there is a hurricane called Gustav somewhere in the Caribbean making its way to the Gulf of Mexico. Since the various authorities have all kinds of neat computers and loads of experience telling them where this storm may be headed, news stations all along the Gulf are currently engaged in the normal frenzy, and warning their viewers that they could very well be in danger should the storm make landfall near them. As it stands now (and it is way too early to tell), the storm looks like it could land somewhere near the Texas-Louisiana border, or just east of the area that Hurricane Rita struck three years ago.

I have very little experience with hurricanes, so I can’t help but be a little fascinated with the hysteria surrounding them. History tells us that hurricanes are nothing we should take lightly. When Rita brushed by the Houston area three years ago, the local network affiliates had 24-hour coverage two days in advance of the storm. Hurricane Katrina, only a month in the past at that time, made folks here very nervous. There was a huge, poorly anticipated evacuation of people that left many stuck in traffic for twenty-four hours or more. In the end, the story wasn’t so much about the storm as it was about the mass of people trying to get out of town. It was unlike anything I had ever seen.

At that time I sent a number of emails to friends and family detailing my impressions of everything happening around town. Should anything interesting happen, I’ll be sure to blog it here.

As of right now, Gustav is getting quite a lot of local media attention. They want people to be ready just in case its path should shift this way. But in all the time the media has spent talking about it, they just repeat the same thing over and over again. It seems they just like talking about it. It’s enough to make one go mad.

Still - it’s better than all the presidential election coverage…