Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene spent the day moving lazily up North Carolina’s Outer Banks, rolling ashore this morning and exiting into Virginia this evening. By landfall the storm had weakened to Category 1 status: just barely a hurricane. Even so, the storm cut a wide swath across the state, though reports of damage (other than power outages) seemed few. Last I heard, four people had died from flooding accidents.

I watched the TV coverage of the storm all day and then wondered why I bothered. There were only so many things one can say about Irene and after the first hour I’d heard them all. I did enjoy watching the live video uplinks from the beaches all up and down the East Coast, courtesy of my Free to Air (FTA) satellite dish. As soon as the studio would cut away from the soggy reporters getting blown around on the beach, those reporters would whip out their Blackberries.
Continue reading