Good Morning!

So, here we go into the Labor Day holiday weekend. For those of us on the East Coast, we've spent much of the last 48 hours enduring increasing histrionics from the mass media about ol' Hurricane Earl.

He did brush by the Carolinas, with some minor beach erosion and local flooding, and seemed to be preparing to do the same to Nantucket and the Outer Cape. But a curious thing happens when a hurricane hits the cold North Atlantic. It falls apart.

Earl was certainly worth watching; as a Category 4 storm at its peak, there could have been significant damage. I don't doubt that being prepared was the wrong course of action; after all, Lord Baden-Powell thought that was good enough for his boys, and I've managed to live a decent life by those words, but I digress.



By the time Earl was 400 miles south of here on Friday morning, we were in full blown "Bread, Milk, PANIC!" mode around here. Boats were pulled, windows were boarded up, and sandbags filled.

Then overnight...nothing. There were areas of the Commonwealth that got up to 4 inches of rain, but strangely enough, that's the 3rd time this year that much rain has fallen in a single event, so we're used to that by now. The maximum wind gust on Nantucket was a whopping 54 mph. We've had stronger winds in blizzards.

I blame the media, more than anything else. We're a bunch of hard-core, cynic, New Englanders around here. We'll gladly put up with weather, hardship, and who knows what else. (and in the process, make the rest of you miserable, too.) But one thing we can't stand is the boy who cried wolf.

So, let's remember the wisdom of the sages Chuck D and Flava-Flav next time around.