It looks like the folks on the Capricorn Coast are finally coming alive to the fact that Tropical Cyclone Ului is going to make this a hellacious weekend for them. Hopefully the storm doesn't rake the coast, but rather crosses perpendicularly; and doesn't linger, but shoots on in.I was worried that WIN's Peter Byrne's rant from a couple of days ago might make people too complacent. Instead, what I think was happening was that TV-veteran Byrne was lodging a widely-felt and popular protest that Australian TV News had become too sensationalistic, and dishonest. These are sentiments I think most people can agree on, in Australia, the U.S., and elsewhere. And Byrne was technically-right: TC Ului was nowhere near the coast at the time, and the hype may have been uncalled for - at that instant.
Still, Byrne may be partly-responsible for keeping complacent people complacent. The forecasts ranging out to a week in advance (and available to him when he made his rant), showed TC Ului being pushed rapidly into the coast. That kind of strong shove in the forecast generally survives changes in the details of the weather forecasts from day-to-day. In other words, the storm's fast break for the coast was going to be a real phenomenon, no matter what happened. So, Ului was the wrong kind of storm to go off-message with. Protests can wait. Complacency has to be disrupted. TV hype, disagreeable as it often is, is sometimes dead-on right. What matters now is storm preparations. People have to start NOW!
No comments:
Post a Comment