As I type this, Hurricane Michael is hours from landfall in the Florida Panhandle. Early this morning it became a category 4, and the National Hurricane Center said a category 4 hurricane has never hit the panhandle (at least since they’ve been keeping records since 1851).
Living in Orlando, Florida (and actually far from the storm) I find it interesting that I didn’t see any local or national press on this storm until Saturday afternoon. Then Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday the coverage grew.
But I did know about this storm at the middle of last week from an outlier. Because my wife was flying out of town last Friday and supposed to return today she wanted to know if there were storms on the horizon that would impede her travels. So days before the press was covering Hurricane Michael—even before it was a hurricane—she was telling me about storm via Mike’s Weather Page on Facebook (also the website www.spaghettimodels.com).
Mike is an amateur weather guy from Tampa, Florida who has a large following and a knack for guessing weather patterns of storms. He acquired the nickname Drunk Donkey from a professional meteorologist who basically was said people shouldn’t be listening to this guy.
I don’t know what his track record is against the big meteorologist, but he has been consistent since I’ve been following him since Hurricane Irma last year. And from what I saw in the past week, he was days ahead of the national press (and government) in his concerns about Hurricane Michael.
If you’ve ever seen the pilot episode of The Newsroom written by Aaron Sorkin you get a glimpse of how the national press works. It has to make choices on what it’s going to put the spotlight on. Last week it was all about Brett Kavanaugh and the issues over his confirmation or not to the supreme court. The attentional was understandable since it was of national importance.
That and college football filled the news cycle until later Saturday afternoon. Hurricane Michael was still a tropical storm then and Sunday TV viewing is centered around pro football. I wouldn’t say there was much of a concern until Monday or Tuesday.
On NPR this morning they reported about a hurricane party last night at a bar just two miles from the beach near where the storm is supposed to make landfall. Now I’m reading that the storm is approaching wind speeds of Hurricane Andrew in 1992—the last category 5 hurricane to hit the continental United States.
I’m also hearing the experts say how this one snuck up on them. But I’m remembering Mike’s concerns a week ago when this storm’s speeds were just 50 mph but potentially heading this way. Just some guy with a passion for tracking hurricanes and reading of the computer data.
This storm certainly gives great street cred (storm cred?) to Mike’s Weather Page. Perhaps we need to listen to the Drunk Donkey more often. I hope after this Mike’s new nickname becomes Hurricane Mike.
It would almost be funny—if lives weren’t at stake.
8:10 PM Update: