The media is very disappointed that the storm fell apart and ruined their broadcasts of doom approaching and then aftermath of people suffering. They give reports of homes and lives lost in places in the islands hit by the storm that are only 4 sheets of plywood nailed together. We feel sorry for them of course but doesn't give us a a real evaluation of what to expect here.

Downgraded, thank goodness!

I'm often amused at the horror expressed by the media at the prospect of 30 mph winds here. Those winds were a drop in the bucket on Lake Michigan shoreline towns. Have sailed in them occasionally.

Weather sells.

Quite correct. 30 mph winds generated excellent sailing weather in the northeast.

The media are paid by ratings, they lie as much as politicians.

The Week That Was......
 

The hype was exactly like the stock market hype that started the week.

A question for all the people Who can't understand the hype, how accurate were the forecasts in your "back home"? Did your newscasters hype Sandy? Let's talk snow storms? Exaggerated? Ignored?

I was in CT when Sandy hit and the newscasters were predicating a very powerful storm. They were accurate in that case. They also had predicted three feet of snow in one snowfall and they were right again. I good time to move to TV. :smiley:

I think the media tends to present the worst case scenario and then everyone hopes they are wrong. The media is all about ratings. IMHO Just ask the people who have been fired for not producing good enough ratings.

My finance analysts told me the stock market downturn was somewhat induced by the media scare of the China situation and the people who control large volume of shares, and sell them off periodically, to scare the little investors. Was he right?

Time will tell. Stay tuned...........

In Grand Rapids, when our son was working for the NBC affiliate, they had thirteen--thirteen!--weathermen. Up there it was the winter storms and straight-line winds and power outages that sold the news.

They made the most they could out of any little thing. And yet none of them ever saw coming the worst two storms (a week apart) while we were there.

Same thing in Minnesota. We're all gonna die of frostbite. In minutes. Two feet of snow turns into 2 inches.

My personal favorite was the tornado siren. My county decided we should be alerted when a storm approached. We started calling it the 'shut the windows' siren.

Erika is no more, thank goodness

My nephew is a meterologist who works for NOAA and I always tease him about the qualifiers his profession uses "partly sunny" 50% chance "possible".

However when you think about it don't we all hedge. Often you will hear the expression "within a medical certainty"meaning as close a call as we can make.
"My guesstimate " "there is a high probablity" and the ubiquitous "maybe"

I think it's passed.