NotTheRock Musings

You know, when I used to live in the Northeast, I used to make fun of the way people freaked out about snow there. It never made sense to me -- it snows plenty, so why is it always a panic-inducing event?

Well, it's gotten sillier. Here in Texas, when there's a chance it's going to rain hard, they freak out similarly. Right now there's yet another storm in the gulf (and yeah, the overhead highway signs this morning said "STORM FORMING IN GULF") and I thought, okay, big deal, it's barely a tropical storm. On the Today show, Al Roker showed a map and explained it's heading towards the Louisiana/Texas border. That's like 3 or 4 hours from here. Then they throw it to the local weather and our local clown -- err, weatherman -- shows it tracking, yep, you guessed it, right at Houston! Everybody panic! It's going to raaaaaaaaaaaaiiiiiiinnn!

Seriously, I know hurricanes and tropical storms are nothing to laugh about -- well, except when they're funny -- but come on. Everyone here is still guyshy because of Katrina -- which didn't impact Houston at all (save for the thousands of people who moved to the Astrodome for a while) and then the following storm, Rita, which began the over-excessive panicking. When Rita was on her way, everybody fled and it was one of things where people were running out of gas on the highways and it took 13 hours to get across town, etc.

So why don't we settle down a bit? Is Houston that afraid of being like New Orleans was? I guess the answer is yes, because our office is talking about closing early so people can go home and "prepare."

Oh, and the storm is expected to get here at about 7 AM tomorrow morning. So, yes, by all means, we should head home early today to batton down the hatches!

Labels: everything's bigger in Texas, Houston, raaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain, tropical storms, weather