Quote Originally Posted by know1 View Post
I'm sure it's going to be bad, but I think the media is promoting this storm like it's armageddon.

I watched the news for 30 minutes this morning and that's all they could talk about. But....they never once mentioned that it's only a category 1 storm. I get that the storm surge and flooding are the issues, but if a category 1 storm were going to make landfall along the gulf coast, they would not be spending this much time talking about what a disaster it was going to be.
Hogwash. Hurricane Isaac was "only" a category 1 hurricane, and look what it did to New Orleans and the surrounding area. Some places got more water from that storm than they did from Katrina. And it got quite extensive media coverage. But this storm may well be the most catastrophic weather event to strike the east coast in any of our lifetimes. It's HUGE - twice the size of Texas. It's the most powerful storm ever to make landfall north of Cape Hatteras. Over 750,000 people are already without power because of it, and it hasn't even made landfall yet. Once it does, and merges with the cold front that recently passed us, there's no telling what kind of snowstorms and power outages there might be. The National Grid is saying those power outages could end up affecting 60 million people. That's 20% of the population.