We didn’t evacuate and my area is expected to have tropical storm conditions later today. Truly, the information deluge might be worse than the hurricane. Dealing with the disinformation/misinformation barrage, plus the “helpful government” constant stream of weather alerts, warnings and updates leaves one feeling exhausted.
Then we come to the odd things yesterday, like Shepard Smith (of histrionic bridge fame in Hurricane Katrina) went off-the-chain yesterday with his “You can’t survive it!” soliloquy on FOX news. Then, Drudge Report started tweeting that the government and media aren’t reporting facts on the hurricane. Later, the National Hurricane Weather Center website went down, at the crucial time when Hurricane Matthew started pounding Florida. The Drudge Report and FOX News again working to undermine the American people’s trust in the government, during a natural disaster… Very disturbing. I wonder if the National Hurricane Center’s crash was from weather, traffic overload or hacking (hostile foreign type).
We also have the wholesale public corruption of the Obama administration, the Clintons and the Democratic Party being exposed with email leaks and even the Trump and Hillary campaigns waging their own staged stunts to discredit each other like the Alicia Machado story or perhaps even this loon with a sign at a Kaine campaign event yesterday, ranting that Bill Clinton is a rapist. The media reported him as a Trump-supporter, but no name, no details. Was he a Trump-supporter or a Dem-staged political stunt?
Trump plays along hyping all these election fraud stories and Roger Stone is gleefully touting Wikileaks Clinton email leaks.
We’ve got a dangerous dynamic brewing, with the mainstream media overtly manipulating news coverage to help Hillary, participating in a massive pile-on of negative stories about Trump, while downplaying, even burying negative stories about Hillary often. The media bias feeds Trump’s demagoguery and creates a dynamic, where many Americans don’t believe anything the media reports on Trump. And all of this seems to have a large hostile foreign intel presence, stirring the pot.
On top of all that, with the internet, millions of people “share” information in a wide array of social media formats, not just on news sites. A couple hours ago, my daughter in TX texted me a photo of an ominous looking cloud shot from the highway near Jacksonville, FL. My daughter believed the photo was a current photo. I told her that I saw that same photo on facebook yesterday afternoon, so I have no idea when that photo was taken. I walked outside and took a photo and sent it to her – to show her it’s barely raining here, at the moment.
It’s very hard to verify photographic images, especially ones of unknown origin. Even ones where the origin is known, small details matter – like in a news article on that dead little Syrian refugee boy that made news around the world – that photo was STAGED. In a British news report, far into the story, the Turkish authorities had moved the body from where he was found. That was a STAGED propaganda ploy.
Well, eventually the truth is likely to shake out. I’m going to go bake lasagna for dinner now, so it’s prepared in case we do lose power later this afternoon. That’s how I’m preparing… We will have a home-cooked meal, even if the power goes out:-) Later.
libertybelle diaries 
The weather here in Clark County Nevada is horrible too. After mowing the lawn, I needed a beer and a cigar to survive the weather while watching the baseball game in my backyard.
Oh, shep is a jerk.
Save some lasagne for me.
joking aside, you should set up a page on Disqus like bright lights so more can follow you.
You have a lawn in Nevada? Assumed it was high desert like New Mexico. I can barely keep up with the blog, so not sure I could maintain a Disqus forum. I post at Brighter Lights occasionally. The Qwiket page is overrun with Trump hordes berating everyone else or bashing National Review writers, no discussion of anything, and of course Douglas on his soapbox…
Maybe LB you mighta added a word to your title. “Hogwash” I’d suggest maybe?
A ‘Concerned Person’ had me monitoring a NWS data recording site (Orlando Executive Airport) which as it turned out was pretty much a waste of time.
For example, when the barometer indicated “the storm effects” beginning at [all times eastern] 1153 the inches of mercury was at 29.85 (6 OCT). Twenty-two hours later (7 OCT) at “the peak” of the storm the mercury had fallen to a piddling 29.30 at 0953 > when I use the meteorological intense language of “piddling” I perhaps ought explain during Arkansas’ peak tornado season, drops of 30.00 to the neighborhood of 28.00 are fairly common but sometimes within a mere fraction of Matthew’s timespan! Of course hurricanes, total energy-wise speaking are giants compared to puny tornadoes but even so Shepard ol’ buddy …
But while speaking apples to oranges anyway I guess I could add that, at “the peak” winds were steady out of the west at 33 mph with the maximum gust being (not-exactly a chicken de-feathering) 52.
TOTAL precipitation over the whole of the Matthew Event [1153 on the 6th to, 0153 on the 8th … but visibility had been ‘to the horizon’ since 1853 on the 7th] anyway “the deluge” came in at the awe-inspiring measurement of (cough) two point four eight inches. Of course 2.48 inches of rain falling in Florida is different than the same drop in the bucket anywhere over the Ozarks but still …
My advice to Shep Smith? “Calm down dear.”
http://w1.weather.gov/data/obhistory/KORL.html
Well, survived the hurricane – the damage locally is very bad and I do mean very. Just got my landline phone, internet and cable back on at 8:47 pm tonight. Our power was restored late yesterday, but at the top of my street, they and most of my town are still without power. Our water company had a major generator failure during the storm, so we’re under a”boil water” advisory. The Savannah area (Chatham County) is in much worse shape. They have extensive flooding and wind damage. They just opened up the roads to let residents back into Chatham at 5 pm today, but were closing the roads at 10 pm – no water or power in almost the entire county.
We live almost 30 miles inland, but we had about 8 hours, through the night Friday, of non-stop wind and rain. We had a dusk to dawn curfew, so I didn’t go outside to clock the wind speed, but it sounded like a freight train. Scarier than when tornadoes have hit this area truthfully. Part of my willow tree blew over and thankfully it missed our house, but a neighbor up my street had a tree blow over into their house.
Hopefully, the stores will start getting shipments of milk, bread, and other perishables – my neighborhood Market Walmart reopened today – on generator power, an employee told me, so they won’t get the perishable stuff in until the power is restored. No milk, produce, no frozen goods, nothing that was in a cooler or freezer, because they had to get rid of all that merchandise. Also, no bread or bottled water. They had plenty of cashiers and employees stocking shelves and were doing a great job, when I am sure many of them also don’t have power in their homes.
Yep LB, it would appear your “general area” received far in excess of the area of Florida I was watching. Being pretty much ignorant of what I think might be your general topology/terrain, all I claim to conjecture as to the “whys” are based on the guess that the winds were focused (and thus constrained, strengthened) by the geological features fairly near your coasts.
I see a couple of +90 mph were recorded so immediately I *conclude your area sustained a greater “hit” (Beaufort Scale)
http://www.spc.noaa.gov/faq/tornado/beaufort.html
than the area I’d been tasked. Too I’m conjecturing, population density (which implies more concentrated areas of susceptible infrastructure) combined to increase the magnitude … oh heck, all I might say is purely academic. Your observations on the other hand …
May you and your’s not run out of TP or potable water.
Click to access PNS_20161008_2237.pdf
JK, I live on the edge of a midling size town, with woods behind me. The area is flat, GA swampland and wooded area (mixture of sand and clay), prone to flooding. This area is also home to a lot eagles and falcons. Often there’s a peregrine falcon perched on my mailbox. There’s also a lot of interesting water fowl in the area, along with plenty of snakes.
We decided not to evacuate, even though our part of the county was under a “voluntary” evacuation order, while closer to the coast was under a “mandatory” evacuation order. There was substantially more flooding closer to the coast here, although NC looks like Fayetteville, which isn’t on the coast got more flooding.
First real hurricane I experienced and I’ve learned a lot – like good idea my youngest daughter relayed about turning the refrigerator and freezer settings to a colder setting 48 hours before the storm. Also froze several gallon containers of water in my chest freezer, which helped keep everything in there from thawing out. Filled my washer several hours before the storm hit, to have in case we needed water to flush the toilets. I made coffee and put it in a thermos, so my husband would have coffee in the morning, if the power went out, which it did. Can’t deal with him if he doesn’t have coffee in the morning. Plus I have a bunch more lessons learned that I didn’t do.
Heading to Walmart now, to see if they have bread today. Have plenty of TP and water, lol.
http://formerspook.blogspot.com/2008/03/wal-mart-to-rescue.html
JK, that is the truth
Even in Savannah, the big retailers were moving quickly to reopen. Government dawdles along.
Back from my little Walmart Neighborhood market store – they had bread and more bottled water. Associates were busily restocking all the shelves of dry goods and some are boxing up the frozen merchandise that needs to be discarded. And they’re still operating off a generator, the cashier told me.