Hurricane madnessThis is a rant about stupid people. Rachel Lucas (not one of the stupid people) has a satellite picture of Hurricane Isabel. Looks pretty scary, since the hurricane seem to be absolutely huge. So it makes sense that the people around here are preparing for the hurricane, right? One problem: it's not coming to Massachusetts, and it's not even going to be close to eastern Mass., unless it significantly changes course. I show up at work at the local supermarket today, and most of the flashlights and much of the D batteries were gone. Also, it was hard to move around in the back room, because we were taking a delivery of pallets upon pallets of bottled water. The weather forecast for Quincy this weekend: cloudy Thursday, probable rain Friday, chance of rain Saturday partly cloudy Sunday. Nothing about Hurricane Isabel carrying houses to Oz. Yet people are buying supplies as if they're preparing for 40 days of rain. I don't know about other places, but let me tell you: this happens every time there's reports of bad weather. This probably is the result of their experiences from the '78 nor'easter, when there were 40 inches of snow and many people were trapped in, among other places, the Boston Garden for a week. But come on, people, this is 25 years ago. Since then, every time there's reports of 3 inches of snow coming, people empty out the supermarket shelves of milk, eggs, bread, flashlights, water, and everything else they think they need to prepare for the apocalypse. And about the flashlights: why do they keep buying them? I can understand the repeat purchase of the other stuff, since they're consumable. But what do they do with the flashlights after the bad weather? UPDATE Duck Season: now part of the Axis of Isabel. Meryl Yourish has the roundup. |
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