Hurricane Matthew
 

Several of our neighbors on East Bear Island have homes on the east coast of Florida. They are still here. They are very anxious as Matthew moves north.

Not to worry Barney. MSNBC is VERY carefully walking back their Armageddon predictions. The Bahamas saw 85 mph winds. Not reported in the media. Maybe the storm is breaking up... as we look. :look: NB

PS: Yes: I have no respect for anything that MSN-BS has to offer. NB

It really depends on where they are. Yes, there will be some areas that will escape severe problems, but MSNBC has nothing to do with the seriousness of the situation and it is easy to be dismissive when ensconced in NH. There is always some exaggeration of the situation but if nothing happens in 4 days, I will be thankful and totally happy to "walk it back."


The National Hurricane Center does an excellent job of tracking these storms but really is dealing with risk and probability , not certainty. Unfortunately many people have little understanding of this. And the error always has to be on the side of safety.

Every tropical event is covered on TV with an interview of some moron who is "going to ride it out." And most of the time they are OK...but they are still selfish morons.

I evacuated my home for Hurricane Andrew and never returned as it was totaled.

MSNBC has Everything to do with the seriousness of the situation. They Reported Armageddon. ....now walking it back...:eek: NB

NB,

As of 5:00 PM today, hurricane Mathew has a sustained wind speed of 140 MPH which makes it a category 4 and extremely dangerous! This hurricane just killed 113 people in Haiti and is about to hit the Florida coast where it will be devastating! I have family there by the way.....

In this instance the media is providing accurate coverage which will hopefully save many lives. I only hope people in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina will heed the warnings of the media as well as their Governors and The President of the United States.

This is an extremely dangerous and monster of a storm that should not be taken lightly.

Edited to add: Correction! Death toll in Haiti is now 264....

Dan

Easy to say media over blew it after the fact. But I'd rather be driving back second guessing the media than being someone who was in New Orleans during Katrina.

Ask someone in Haiti if its overblown

While I can't completely disagree with the tendency of some media sources to overinflate weather events ("blizzard" coverage comes to mind), I think they have this one right. I wasn't around but I believe back in the "good old days" the great hurricane of 1938 arrived essentially without warning. Imagine if that were to happen today...

All things being equal, I think a little warning is justified and can save a lot of lives. There's a lot more people living near the coast than even 50 years ago and evacuations can take much longer as a result.

9:35 pm
 

MSN: "Lyin Brian" is now reporting ...You Decide....:eek: NB

Hurricanes draw their power from warm, humid air found only over warm ocean waters like 80-degree ocean water.

NoBozo: You are way off the mark here. The implication of your comment is that the liberal media did the residents of Florida a disservice by over stating the facts and slanting its reporting. I would usually agree with you on this. However, not this time. If you listened to Florida's very Republican Governor Scott yesterday it appeared that the world as we know it was about to end in Florida. I think the media, public officials and facts were on the same page for this one. While it looks as if the impact of the storm might not be as severe as the worse-case-scenario the reporting/warnings were all appropriate. This storm is a beast.

Relatively unscathed here in Palm Beach county. Was a long storm with 24 hours of tropical force / hurricane gust winds - still blowing probably though this afternoon. Power blips a few times and some palm fronds strewn about, but not much in terms of significant damage.

Space coast (and Jax) are taking a bigger hit.

It was a very close call. Defintiely dodged a bullet. Gov Scott was getting a bit dramatic but probably better to err on that side than taking it casually (it was a cat 4 bordering on 5 at times and pretty close to the coast). Surprised to see that even though we haven't had a significant storm in over 10 years, people took this one seriously and seemed to be prepared.

Home Depot and Publix made out pretty well :)

Didn't watch any national media (except Weather Channel) but local media did a great job.

My father use to live on Coco beach, he always took comfort in the fact that they hardly ever got hit. It's really incredible if you look where Orlando is and they also don't get battered very often. Don't know if it's true, but I've heard that Disney did a study and decided on that location due to this. I bet he's glad he wasn't on the beach for this one.

Yeah, I would consider Orlando a "safe" zone (one we usually have on our list of possible evacuation spots) - although not as far inland as we sometimes vision.

Disney (most) actually closed yesterday and will stay closed today. The LSU / UF game in Gainesville was postponed as well.

Miami and Palm Beach County pretty much escaped unscathed....Daytona is only reporting 80MPH winds, not the 140 that was predicted so it looks like it may not be as serious as expected.
Big problem will be the storm surge around Jacksonville.

We have a driving south trip planned for this weekend. Mass media has never given me enough details so I use the NOAH weather pages to sample the route. I've been doing this the past few days and I must say NOAH has been a lot different from panic mongering network articles.

I didn't know Shep Smith reported for MSNBC? :-)
He laid out a terrifying scenario to urge people living on or near Florida’s eastern coast to evacuate before the storm made landfall on Friday.

“This moves 20 miles to the west, and you and everyone you know are dead — all of you — because you can’t survive it,” he said. ”It’s not possible unless you’re very, very lucky. And your kids die, too.”
https://twitter.com/Deathbymartymar/...22375424004096
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b0b6a4303166c1

Is that like Fox entertainment tells the truth.

Breaking News @ 1:20 PM
 

Kerry Sanders (NBC News) and his courageous film crew are out of gas....literally, and no gas stations are open. :look: NB

No "Matthew" Here
 

We enjoyed an exquisite calm day on our wonderful lake here on East Bear Island today as we watched TV reports of hurricane Matthew's trek north just off the east Florida coast. Neither our island neighbors nor my brother in Cocoa suffered any damage at their homes in Florida. 🐻

24 HOURS LATER: Just tuned in to Fox News and MSNBC on TV before I came here. . Just so I'm up to date: :)

The hurricane.... seems to have disappeared....As a news item: Nothing. POOOF :look:

NOW: The big story is... Get TRUMP. What can I say. :eek: NB

PS: Saw a LOT of Trump signs around the lake while on vacation last two weeks. Hillary: Not so much. :)

Looks like NoBozo was right :laugh:

Really?? 900 people dead in Haiti and up to 10 billion in damage on the US coast so far (per CNN this morning)....yeah it was nothing.....

Guessing game
 

It seems to me that predicting a hurricane's path is similar to predicting a big Nor'easter in the winter. How much snow will fall where and how bad the winds will howl is dependant on where the bands set up and how much the storm wobbles as it approaches. A 20 mile wobble can make a huge difference. A snow band that stays in one place can hugely impact the snow total.

The problem is the weather services like to pretend they can provide a level of predictability that is just not possible. All this is based on multiple computer models. The models don't agree so they try to "average out" the results. A little while back, a storm's models all seemed to coalesce. An excited weather announcer stated "that's CONVERGENCE" which for some reason implied to her, certainty. The storm did something different. The models mostly agreed and they were WRONG.

The best "certainty" for this storm as it approached Haiti was probably that "Matthew would soon impact the southeast coast of the US with hurricane force winds". Last night, they were predicting that the winds would still be at around 110 MPH this morning. They are at 75 MPH. The difference between a minimal category 3 to barely a hurricane. The expected damage difference between these winds speeds is significant. Could you shelter in place for a category 1 storm, possibly. Should you try to weather out a category 3 storm? No way.

Prudence would dictate you prepare for the worst and celebrate that it may not have happened. Katrina, a category 3 at landfall, was ill prepared for and because of the unexpected levee breaks had a more severe outcome. Government failed to convince people to leave the area to be safe. It's amazing that people could be that stupid and that many more people weren't killed.

I think it's pointless to discuss expected damage prior to impact in a certain area and the lack of it in the aftermath. I also think it's silly to be claiming that damage is $$$$ dollars at this point and put much faith in the numbers. It's going to take time (weeks?, months?) to assess.

It was a bad storm. It killed people, some who probably should have gotten out of its path, and it did a lot of damage. Hopefully good relief efforts are well under way. Rebuilding will take time and money.

God bless those who have been hurt by it.

We have good friends of the family in Ft. Lauderdale that were fortunate to have almost no issue with the storm. Another family friend in St. Augustine may have lost everything due to storm surge / flooding. Separation of roughly 200 miles made a big difference.

As pointed out very eloquently above, it's likely more than 1000 people have lost their lives due to this storm. It's easy to sit 1000+ miles away and pontificate on your perception of media coverage; here's a thought, how about showing some compassion and empathy for your fellow humans!

We whine because the water is too low to get to our vacation homes. Those poor souls in Haiti had nothing before the storm and have lost even that! Seriously, how about a little perspective check before posting some of this stuff. In the words of a late and beloved great aunt, "it doesn't cost anything to be nice." Think about it....

REALLY: You use CNN as a source...Really...MSNBS says 300 lost in Haiti..Just sayin..:eek: Whats in a number. Just make it up. BTW: I think BOTH sources are Bogus. NB

Wow, just wow....

Actually MSNBC says the death toll has "soared past 800"... but like you say "what's in a number".....

http://www.msnbc.com

I think someone needs to remove two letters from their screen name.

Haiti was not the topic of the thread,it was the effect of the hurricane on Florida .Just saying that some in the media went a little overboard.
Shep Smith went apocalyptic ......said everyone and their kids were going to die
I agree it's best to play it safe and evacuate and glad it didn't result in many loss of lives on the coast

Did the thread title get changed, because it is Hurricane Matthew now. Hurricane Matthew devastated Haiti and killed hundreds of people there. Their lives are important even though they aren't Americans.

For anyone pooh poohing the media coverage while safely tucked away over a thousand miles away, Matthew had the potential to destroy communities and kill just as many that died in Haiti. It's easy to be Monday morning quarterbacking the hype. I for one am glad people got out and stayed safe.

100% agreement. Better safe than sorry.

Mad Matthew
 

SAMIAM is correct. This thread was started to indicate the concern for folks connected with our Lakes Region area with the march of hurricane Matthew headed north and aiming toward their homes in Florida. 🐻

Until the second post when NB turned into something else.