Weather What?

This isn’t one of those “We are doomed” sort of post. This is actually about watching the weather.

So it started with Isaac and Florida. They made a huge deal about the storm which is fine as we do need to watch these things. Yet, there was a feeling of thinly veiled fear selling here. At least to me anyway.

The Weather Channel is a handy thing really. Where we live we sort of need to keep an eye on things as we have some whopper storms that often include hail and possible tornadoes, but when Isaac turned into a full blown official hurricane, my roommate commented that if the two blonds on there got any more excited about it, they would be having on air orgasms. Huh?

Then in the middle of a report about serious band off the Hurricane, I hear this “You can hear the horizontal rain as it hits my “LL Bean” jacket!!” This caused me to do a double take. I thought to myself “Did I just hear product placement in the middle of a freaking HURRICANE report?” then I nodded, knowing it was what I heard and shook my head muttering “What the heck?”

I grew up in New Orleans. I remember as a kid, mom and dad would watch Nash Roberts and get their Hurricane predictions then spent a few hours boarding up large windows, shuttering others, bringing in anything that could fly. When my sister and I got older I remember helping do all these things including sandbagging. The point here is we didn’t leave back then, we hunkered down and road out what ever mother nature sent our way. Evacuations didn’t come along until much later.

We had a lot of near misses in those days but I would spend much of my time during those heavy storms playing with my friends in my room with blankets turned into tents and large coloring books my mom had picked up to keep us little ones occupied. The older kids would hang out in my sister’s room listening to music and trying to act cool. While our parents sat around playing cards, some drinking their beer, others drinking their coffee and often eating various staples of seafood and fish.

We all would watch Mr. Roberts as he stood outside with his long rain coat, generic white rubber boots that most dads owned including my own and a large golf umbrella. Nash didn’t talk about whose fashion he was wearing or using, but he did tell others to wear their boots if they went outside.

I must say, I preferred Mr. Roberts for his straight forward manner then these new guys with their snazzy LL Bean jackets. I would likely bet good old Mr. Nash with his somber exterior and generic gear stayed drier longer too. Not to mention, he was usually right in his storm predictions and he didn’t even have the tech of today to help him either.