The Perfect Storm of Hype: NHC Gets Defensive After Irene Peters Out
Posted by Jim Hoft on Monday, August 29, 2011, 5:43 AM
Via Drudge:
‘People assume we can predict everything’…
NYT: Experts Misjudged Structure and Next Move…
IRENE: A PERFECT STORM OF HYPE…
‘Category Feh’…
The National Hurricane Center got defensive today after Hurricane Irene petered out into a less severe tropical storm.
Toby Harnden at The Telegraph probably said it best:
Perfect Storm of Hype: Politicians, the media and the Hurricane Irene apocalypse that never was
For the television reporter, clad in his red cagoule emblazoned with the CNN logo, it was a dramatic on-air moment, broadcasting live from Long Island, New York during a hurricane that also threatened Manhattan.
“We are in, right, now…the right eye wall, no doubt about that…there you see the surf,” he said breathlessly. “That tells a story right there.”
Stumbling and apparently buffeted by ferocious gusts, he took shelter next to a building. “This is our protection from the wind,” he explained. “It’s been truly remarkable to watch the power of the ocean here.”
The surf may have told a story but so too did the sight behind the reporter of people chatting and ambling along the sea front and just goofing around. There was a man in a t-shirt, a woman waving her arms and then walking backwards. Then someone on a bicycle glided past.
Across the screen, the “Breaking News: Irene Batters Long Island” caption was replaced by stern advice from the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA): “Stay inside, stay safe.”
The images summed up Hurricane Irene – the media and the United States federal government trying to live up to their own doom-laden warnings and predictions while a sizeable number of ordinary Americans just carried on as normal and even made gentle fun of all the fuss.
There was almost palpable disappointment among the TV big guns rolled out for the occasion when Irene was downgraded to a mere ‘tropical storm”. In New York city, CNN’s silver-haired Anderson Cooper, more usually seen in a tight t-shirt in a famine or war zone, was clad in what one wag dubbed “disaster casual”.
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Published May 22, 2012 at 5:04 am - 24 Comments
Ginger commented:
What is so funny is the Fox reporters female and males would be standing there holding their hats on and warning people to get off the beach that it was dangerous…..then people would walk by waving. So funny.
PCM commented:
And then there was this from the Weather Channel (WARNING: NSFW). http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pY4gJoKwtAQ&feature=player_embedded
BlogDog commented:
Mark Levin had a guest on Friday who called almost exactly what happened. I can’t remember his name but let’s hear more from him next time the NHC gets the collywobbles.
Mark1957 commented:
The most over hyped storm ever. This was the MSM carrying the Obama administration’s water. They had “the one” at FEMA. there was J-Nap forcasting doom, the FEMA director saying how prepared they are. All over a Cat – 1 storm. These clowns were AWOL for every other disaster over the last 3 years, now with an election coming up, here they are.
jorgen commented:
Obozo and his people are consistenly wrong/lying so just do the opposite of what they say.
Mark1957 commented:
“In New York city, CNN’s silver-haired Anderson Cooper, more usually seen in a tight t-shirt in a famine or war zone, was clad in what one wag dubbed “disaster casual”.
A.C. loves zipper trout. Was Chris Mathews on air shouting ” I feel the tingle” ?
vero commented:
My guess is that the families that lost loved ones will not think “hype” My Mother-n-law, who returned home to find she has pretty much lost everything near Washington NC, doesn’t think “Hype” – My Aunt, near Kinston NC who lost the top of her house, same thing.
I am betting that those here that are making light of the “hype” didnt lose a damn thing in the storm. Me, I rather look dumb now, then look really, really stupid later.
Dell commented:
Over-hyped? Maybe in the Big Apple…but in upstate New York, Vermont, New Hampshire and Maine it’s a horrible disaster…the worst disaster in nearly 100 years. It will take many billions of dollars to repair the border to border damage, and it’s not done yet. There’s still wide-spread flooding and power outages that may take many weeks to repair.
But we know that we don’t count.
That is all.
big L commented:
In Haiti, Coop and Farheed and the other guy wre all wearin identical black “thin-style” shirts.
It looked really staged and dumb.
that reporter from CNN remined me of Baghdad Bob: ‘we have stopped the intruders at the airport!” And there were US tanks rolling across the background…
Ginger commented:
http://lamecherry.blogspot.com/2011/08/berlins-din-on-western-front.html
I you want to thank the person who is responsible for exposing and ramping up the Obama regime’s Gunrunner which was designed in the end to create a Marxist bandito narco funded murder incorporated for Obama to overthrow the Mexican government and as a paramilitary terrorist group to murder Americans, the name is Jürgen Grässlin.
Lurvelymomma commented:
Never let a good crisis go to waste, eh?
Mitchell commented:
I wonder how much of the “billions of dollars in damages” of repair work will be spent replacing crappy infrastructure that they should have been maintaining. These feckless idiot media types are lucky it wasn’t the real thing.
Ginger commented:
I bet most of all of the money will go into the pockets of the unions to help re-elect the kenyan fraud.
Erik commented:
They now claim they cant predict how a storm will turn out over the next few days.
But they still insist that they *can* predict with perfect certainty how the entire climate will be 50 years from now down to 1/10th of a degree….
Brian The Adequate commented:
So next time the NHC will go with the lower danger end of their range of probablilities rather than the upper end, people will decide to ride it out and the story will be that the NHC killed people by down playing the danger. The data is not sufficient for perfect prediction.
Irene fizzled to the minimal damage end of the likely scenarios. That is a good thing, unless you would prefer the prediction of weakening followed by a Cat 2 or 3 strike on NYC.
It is unfair and frankly quite beneath your usual standards to beat up on the NHC for this.
Please excuse me while I go shower, defending bureaucrats makes me feel dirty.
Remco Kimber commented:
How we could all use a laugh,
One (or more) of these knuckle headed on-the-spot “reporters” is standing on a board walk with his/her back to ocean, wind whipping, rain torrential. Suddenly a wave rises behind the so-called reporter, captures the reporter and all equipment and sweeps him/her out of sight, never to be seen again.
Possible enhancement. Shark spotted off shore with reporter firmly in grasp.
TV worth watching.
BenK commented:
#3 — Dr. Simon Atkins.
Mike commented:
The NHC was just doing what Obama pays them to do; manipulate and obsfucate science for political gain to ensure the Federal Funding doesn’t disappear. All the Global Warming crap is the same, manufactured lies and falsified “data” to enable to power elite to economically rape and CONTROL the “flyover people”. Only the stupidist and most gullible among us now believe in their immoral, unethical and illegal nonsense.
Andreas K. commented:
‘People assume we can predict everything’
Well, not our fault when our “weather gods” paint themselves as such. I mean, they can predict the entire development of earth’s climate for the next 100 years (so they claim), but they can’t do it with a single storm? Uh huh!
Uh, yeah, common sense alone dictates that a hurricane traveling that far up north would eventually lose energy. It’s only logical, but nobody even considered it.
Why?
Because saying “OMG WE’RE ALL GOING TO DIE!” sells better than saying “Well, there is a high chance it may lose power and become harmless.”
wtd commented:
The Catskills are not near the coastal areas yet will suffer for some time to come from the effects of Irene. Witness the flooding of the Schoharie Valley. Hype?
gus commented:
THE OSCAR FOR…..BIGGEST DOUCHE BAG IN A NANNY STATE MUSICAL goes tooooooo!!!!!
MICHAEL DOOOOOOMBERG. He had his Fire Police and Emergency Services heads standing behind him for a half hour while he gave the GLOOOM AND DOOOOM REPORT!! They weren’t doing their jobs, they were standing MUTE.
Then DOOOOOOMBERG read the DOOM and GLOOM report, in SPANISH.
What a loser.
gus commented:
Should have had Al Gore and East Anglia University predict this storm.
greenfairie commented:
It’s not funny when you see the massive flooding and damage done by this supposedly “weak” storm that killed when I last saw 13 people.
Having once lived in hurricane country, I’d rather be too safe than too sorry. Hurricanes are unpredictable. They can strengthen or weaken unexpectedly, shift direction, and leave the coastal areas with little damage while destroying homes 50 miles inland. Blaming media and the government for hype will in the end make more people reluctant to evacuate or plan for a hurricane when one is predicted to come their way. And we wonder why those “idiots” in New Orleans laughed and shrugged off Katrina one day, then were standing on rooftops and pillaging local supermarkets the next. You just don’t know. I’d rather be inconvenienced by “hype” than to find myself in a flooded house with no possibility of rescue.
gus commented:
Yes Greenfaire, I’m sure you would. Idiot.
Jeff S. commented:
People need to quit conflating the MSM and the NHC. Jim Cantori works for the Weather Channel. He doesn’t work for the NHC; neither does Anderson Cooper or Geraldo.
I certainly would rather have the current forecasting performance than to go back to the days where we got two days of warning that a major storm was coming (see Labor Day hurricane of 1935 or Audrey of 1957, for example). The average U.S. citizen couldn’t pass a 10th grade science test, but those same people are just certain that the NHC are a gang of clowns. Sure, the NHC is going to make mistakes–it’s a hard business.
Of course, the media performance is a different story. Their hyping of the storm was utterly predictable, and wholly inexcusable. But don’t hold your breath for them to change.
Sandy commented:
Gus Michael Dooooomberg — Love It.
Andreas K. commented:
Greenfairie, oh please. 13 dead a catastrophe? We have similar death tolls when rivers in the Alps flood and they do that every year.
You want a catastrophe? Try tens of thousand dead and missing, like after the Sendai tsunami.
Irene was NOTHING. Even Katrina was harmless and only really made bad because the local authorities had been STUPID for decades. Parts of New Orleans are below sea level and it’s known hurricane land. But they were NOT prepared for anything, despite something like Katrina being just a matter of time.
If a quake would shake the West Coast today, it would also be chaos. Why? Because nobody is prepared. Because nobody gives a sh*t.
Rhoda R commented:
I seem to remember that the emphasis was on coastal flooding and, more particularily, NYC flooding – the inland flooding was really an afterthought. So those of you who are pointing to inland flooding as an excuse for the “OH MY GOD WE’R GOING TO DIE!!!” reporting should realize that the overhype wasn’t about what the real threat (as anyone who has been through more than one hurricane can attest) is.
Lee Murphy commented:
My favorite story about the hurricane hype was in the Daily Rash about a New Jersey woman in her eighties who refused to evacuate her beachfront home because she wanted to work on her tan! You go, girl! http://www.thedailyrash.com/new-jersey-suntan-legend-ignores-hurricane-irene-evacuation-order
tommy mc donnell commented:
the purpose of the weather channels and government diaster agencies is to terrify the american people. and it works. just ask the people with the years supply of bottle water, twenty loaves of bread, ten gallons of milk that they’ll be throwing in the garbage in a few days. i remember when americans were supposed to be brave, courageous and bold. now they tremble at the sight of a snow flake. its amazing what a college education can do.
Bill K. commented:
I’m glad I’m not the only one who thought the coverage was a little fishy. When I watched my local channel late Saturday morning I was told rain was coming down at the rate of 1-2 inches an hour where I lived. Oh, and the winds were really picking up. Actual conditions: Light drizzle, no wind. Then they would report from a location near the coast and give us the same shot of a tree blowing fiercely in the wind while the reporter(who you never saw) gave us an update. It was almost like they were just running the same footage on a loop because you never saw the surrounding area. Gee, you think that would have blown their cover?