Saturday, February 27, 2010

Snowicane?

The National Weather service is having a hissy fit with sites like accuweather that called our recent storm "a snowicane", claiming that it was inciting panic in the populace.

We were 32 hours without power, but I learned from a friend that southern Maine had 90 mph hours winds; the Portland jetport reported winds over 70mph; a town not far from here had 38 inches of snow; the entire Bristol pennisula is without power; 8 inches of rainfall was common in those places that had rain. *raises hand*

The NWS argues that Hurricanes are tropical in nature-our temps here are in the 40's which is more or less tropical for Maine in February.

I have been in Maine 30 years and have not seen as much damage from named hurricanes. I think the NWS needs to re-think what to call these massive storms that have no name. Panic? Well, if there is storm coming that is going to knock out your power for more than 24 hours (this one knocked out power to over a million people-100K in Maine), people need to be worried.

Sure, I'm set up for no power-I have a hand pump for well water, kerosene lamps, oil, and candles, a wood stove for heat...but a lot of folks are left in the cold and without water; I think they deserve a chance to get prepared to stay elsewhere for a few days. BEFORE the falling trees make the roads impassable.

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