NOAA StormReady preparedness or the Fortune Teller of the Coast:
Living on the coastline, I find it beautiful and a wonderful place to live. There is nothing as seeing the sun come up over the Gulf Shores or the Mobile Bay, early in the morning. At sunset, the locals gather to watch the sun go down, quietly, as if we were looking at a new miracle happening. The next best thing is fishing, which I love spending time. But we all get a little itchy this time of year, when the announcement of hurricane season comes out. But this year, where are those predictions for goodness sakes? Every year, right after Christmas, the new Years begin, Mardi Gras begins and it is usually announced we are having a heavy hurricane season. They have been mistaken so often, I do not think they will tell us anymore.
Everyone packs up on batteries, water and everything needed for the winds, since Katrina scare is still there. Every time, the Denver folks announce we are having a huge season of many hits on the gulf, nothing happens. Thank you God. I am beginning to think the University of Denver no longer knows where a hurricane will hit or if they will develop. But these guys are darn good at scaring us to death.
Mardi Gras has come and gone. So far the news has been pretty quiet about our hurricane season for ’08. I do not know if that means we will have them or not, or even if Denver is listening and checking it out anymore.
I do hear about global warming and that will keep the hurricanes down.(Didn’t we have global warming last year? Still, there were predictions, wrong of course.) But no talk, this year, of a prediction of what to expect in the months to come. I have about given up on technology. I think these hurricanes predictors need to be located on the coast they are predicting and maybe then we can know what to expect here on the coast and be more accurate.
I feel like the old saying, “If they can send a man to the moon,…” You would think a team of experts in a university set up for this, could come up with a fairly close answer. That is what they get paid for, or is education not what it use to be? Sometimes, it feels more predictable if I listen to my pain in my back, or watch the birds flying the wrong way or some other crazy old way than to count on the experts to get around to deciding what is going on in the sea from Africa.
This season is as unusual as the campaign for President of the United States, maybe this is what we should blame the weather forcast on.
I guess I will join the other locals. We will all head to Big Mart and load down on supplies and hope we are stacked up on supplies. An active season? A quiet season. Who knows? This is the most unusual year. Maybe we will be lucky and no more winds for a long time. All we can do is pray and hope God is listening. Because it looks as if only God and Mother Nature knows for sure.
