Everyone At My Work Keeps Talking About the Hurricane ::Snurfle::

I'm convinced this is the end for us all.

...could be worse though:

" Has anyone ever seen an F5?"

I hate the hysteria that accompanies these things. If you believe the news, not only is the sky falling, but it's probably going to land on your house.

The local media goes into a frenzy whenever a storm develops. Last Friday, we had all these meetings at work to review our emergency procedures, and to remind us that we're expected to come to work even if the sky is falling.

Since the storm pushed north over the weekend, everyone has calmed down a bit.

I have a guest room, any of you refugees are welcome to bunk down here.

The hurricane is gods way of telling us something. I can hear him now;

"For fuck sakes, the dinosaurs didn't gimme this much trouble. Fucking die already!"

I'm in West VA and its supposed to blow up around here!

Oh well I guess I better stock up on beer.

Oh shit.
<a href="http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm13/projectedpath_large.html" target="_blank">http://www.weather.com/maps/news/atlstorm13/projectedpath_large.html</a>

It's going to be a category 7 when it hits my house with no warning in the middle of the night.

I'm taking time off tomorrow so I can dig a storm cellar.

I survived Gloria and Andrew while living in Florida. A hurricaine in NY will be nothing.

Wow, looks like I'll be catching the tail-end of this muthafuckoo! Seriously, I hope all your eastern-southern dwellers are alright. This looks bad.

Should I find it funny that work is throwing on 'hurricane shifts' for Friday night (sadly, I'm one of them)? Most projections have the Western New York area getting anywhere from 5-15 inches of rain, so of course people are going to go straight to the movies, right?

In all seriousness, I hope all the southeastern-based Chewers get through this okay. Especially Prala... repeated deep breaths will help...

I'm not worried about prala. She can cute her way out of any situation.

Damn, I thought we'd be catching the edge of this or something. It's going right through a bunch of states. Yikes.

Lucky for us, Philly isn't expecting more than 2" of rain. Though I do feel for those who are likely to be hit harder by this storm.

My folks should be arriving at our house this afternoon. They live in Nags Head and it looks like that's where she's gonna make first landfall.

I'm almost finished with my storm cellar. My shovel broke, so I'm down to a plastic cup and two spoons now. Oh, and my generator I ordered from overreactors.com is coming later today. I thought I would be fine.

Then I watched the news again, and they said there are waves. In the ocean. Fucking waves. Have you ever heard of this? Then end is nigh!

This is my favoritest post ever.

Thanks, guys. I appreciate the kind words.

And I want to clarify that I have no problem with those who are making adequate preparations, like leaving Nags Head. I do have a problem with the bitch at the grocery store buying 6 gallons of milk and a tanker of spring water. And I hate the local news.

Sammy's just said what I tried to say unsuccessfully in my first post.

That's hysteria. That's what happens. It's the result of there being 5 24 hour news channels and untold local channels trying to find enough news to fill their time. Since there's nothing real going on, they continue to hype this storm and work people into a froth.

My wife was telling me they interrupted TV shows all day yesterday to hourly updates, but the interruptors were only getting updates every 6 hours from the Hurricane Center, so they were basically coming on every hour and saying we have nothing new, but the sky is definitely going to fall. More on this in a hour, when we still won't have anything new.

It's one thing in coastal states where the hurricaine can pick up speed over the water. But once it hits the mainland, it won't be able to sustain those winds. I think most of the Northern cities will be fine.

Everywhere? If only that were true....

You absolute *star*.

We should be getting some interesting weather here in the G.

I live in England, where the weather tends to be miserable but polite in the main. We get some bad storms from time to time, but nothing worth comparing to a hurricane.

However, when I was in France over New Year 2001, they had a *terrible* storm (afterwards they called it "le catastrophe"). The aftermath was unbelievable, as we discovered after we cut through the fallen trees blocking every single road out of the village. Whole fields of woods had just been flattened, like those pictures of the aftermath of Tunguska. Everywhere there were flattened cars and fallen telephone poles and flooded bridges.

We, however, were fine, but somewhat inconvenienced. The thing I'd suggest is that you may as well stay where you are, because if you take some kind of minor structural damage to the house you need to be on hand to fix it (broken windows, flooding of the carpet, that kind of thing). But I wouldn't drive if I could help it or go outside. The wind can blow shingles and so forth a fair ways, and trees do blow down.

As far as I can tell, the main thing that kills people in the UK (and France was the same) in storms was blown things/trees falling/hitting them or their cars whilst they were in them.

Other than that, you're fine.

I'm beginning to think I played this all wrong. If I had pretended to buy into the hysteria (rather than mocking it mercilessly) I could be "working from home" today. As it stands, I'm one of the few people in my mostly empty office.

Update: so I ended up going home early after all. I was given the opportunity to "work from home" and I took advantage. And let me just say it's a good thing I did. It rained all evening. And there were winds, too. It got dark really early. Like really early. And they pre-empted Wheel of Fortune to show local news of the storm in other places where there was actually news. But then That 70s Show came on at 8, and everything worked out fine. I didn't even need my storm cellar. But I don't know what to do with a 1/2 ton of d batteries.

It got dark really early? And it rained? Wow. You're so brave. I wouldn't have known what to do!

Can I come over and tentatively and admiringly squeeze your biceps?

I'd leave you wanting a smoke.

edit: In my storm cellar. wink

Hey, headlines say that 3 people have been killed during the storm.

Apparantly, one of these people was attempting to escape from a locked trunk in the Atlantic.

The other two were trying to simultaneously shoot apples off of each other's heads with bows and arrows.

We got a call from my wife's grandparents around noon yesterday asking if we'd heard about the hurricane. I would have answered no, but luckily she was the one on the phone with them.

Well my Mom's work is now washed out ot sea. She waited tables at a pier house restaurant and it is 3/4's gone.

How is their residence?

They don't know yet. They stayed with us and planned to go back today but they may stay with us a bit longer. Only essential people are getting back on the island today after noon at the earliest anyhow.

All kidding aside, best of luck. I know there were some people who were really affected by this storm. It's just that despite what the news would have you think, we really weren't.

Thanks and no problem on the jokes. The news always blows things WAAAAY out of proportion.

Well, it's come and gone and the only damage I see is a lot of leaves on the ground.

That was apparently enough to keep everyone away from work, so I'm here all alone. Not working.