The Potential for a Potentially Potential Hurricane Season - weekly column

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

The Potential for a Potentially Potential Hurricane Season

I love Nature partly because she is not man, but a retreat from him.

None of his institutions control or pervade her.

-attributed to Henry David Thoreau

The buzzy words this hurricane season are the noun “potential” and its adverb “potentially.” In Latin “potential” means powerful; in modern English the meaning has drifted into a consideration of the possible. In Latin a potential storm is one that is powerful; in English a potential storm is not a storm at all but rather a weather disturbance that might become a storm.

We haven’t yet read a sentence such as “The potential hurricane is potentially heading for a potential landing on Florida’s cost,” but we might before the season is over. “Potential” is The Word; you are not going to see or hear the weather news this year without the speaker casting it about like pixie dust: “Potentially you are not going to potentially see or hear the potential weather news without the potential speaker casting it potentially about like potential pixie dust.”

Weather Underground (I don’t think they are really underground) came up with a fresh storm metaphor this year, “muscling,” as in “Hurricane Dorian is muscling its way to Florida.” That’s pretty good the first few hundred times you hear it.

Otherwise, the weather news is clotted with the same old metaphors about storms making landfall, brewing in the Gulf, building up steam, storming ashore (because, after all, storming is what storms do), lashing, pounding, barreling, reducing to rubble, battening down the hatches, wreaking havoc, leaving swaths of destruction, trees snapping like matchsticks, cars tossing around like toys, cities dodging the bullet, a street looking like a war zone, we’re not out of the woods, the eerie calm before the storm, the eerie calm in the eye of the storm, the eerie calm after the storm, perfect storm, storm of the century, in the crosshairs, fish storm, decimated, ground zero, and on and on.

Mother Nature’s Wrath and Mother Nature’s Fury used to be part of the babble, but no more. We have progressed from Greco-Roman mythology about nature goddess to Renaissance obsessions with witches. Someone must be blamed for hurricanes, and now the fault is beastly climate-change deniers instead of goddesses.

Climate-change deniers? Really?

As Henry David Thoreau said, “The wind that blows is all that anyone knows.”

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We've Ridden Out Storms of Bad Reporting Before - a column about hurricane reporters

Lawrence Hall, HSG
Mhall46184@aol.com

We’ve Ridden Out Storms of Bad Reporting Before

There is nothing amusing about hurricanes; they are destructive and deadly. May God protect all who are menaced by them.

However, the babblings and posturings of some resume’-obsessed national reporters during hurricanes are indeed amusing. The detached observer wonders if these clevers might assume that petitions to God are addressed to them.

In reporting foul weather there are only so many ways one can say “wind,” “rain,” “tornado,” and “storm surge,” and so the keyboard commandos keep flooding (so to speak) readers and viewers with the same old metaphors and similes.

Here, then, is a catalogue of clichés to read and consider before abandoning Cyrus Heather-Shannon Trevor Neville Ponsonby of World Global Universal News Digital Cable Satellite Network to the dark waters and changing the channel to Flip this Senator off the Island:

Rain event. We’re not out of the woods. Dodged the bullet. A storm is brewing. Building up steam. Losing steam. Wreaking havoc. Left a swath of destruction it its wake. Changed my life forever. Mother Nature’s wrath. Mother Nature’s Fury. Mother Nature’s Vengeance. Decimated. Trees snapped like matchsticks. Mother of all hurricanes. Batten down the hatches. Hunker down (that always seems somewhat vulgar). Roofs peeled back like sardine cans. Cars tossed about like matchboxes. Boats tossed about like matchboxes. Boats smashed like match boxes. Boats bobbing about like corks. Rain coming down in sheets (never blankets or comforters). Calm before the storm, usually eerie. Calm in the eye of the hurricane, always eerie. Like a ghost town. Perfect storm. Katrina, Katrina, Katrina. Storm of the century. Storm of a lifetime time. Looks like a warzone. Reduced to rubble. Debris field. Fish storm. Bearing down. Lashing. Roaring. Pounding. Swirling. Spinning. Barreling. Striking. Hitting. Storming ashore (well, yes, storming is what storms do).

Finally, any meaningful reporting is frequently interrupted for the visual cliché of some stupid man or woman doing stupid things for the camera. Wearing his Baron von Richthofen goggles and with his L.L. Bean hoodie flapping in harmony with just-the-right street sign the Dan Rather manqué clings to a palm tree and gasps into a microphone the obvious fact that he is an idiot who has gone outside in a hurricane.

All across this great land television viewers are laughing at this absurd figure and taking bets on whether he will be swept away.

No charitable man or woman would ever wish anyone harm, of course, except for motivational speakers, but there can be few people so insensitive and so hard-hearted and so lacking in charity that they would not weep tears of joy to see a national network drama-mama-papa and his cosmic microphone of existential doom pressured-washed down the street for a block or two.

We can dream.

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