Hurricane "Hype" Hits Hard

In the not so recent past, meteorologists left much to be desired. Weather reports were usually 50/50, and one wondered why even pay these scientists when the layman could also produce such a round-robin score. It was not far from reality to find someone shoveling several inches of "the partly cloudy".

Yet this age of computer directed weather models has been strikingly accurate in recent years. They will tell you a blizzard is coming, they will tell you which hour it will start falling, and they will even tell you the final inch count, depending on which part of the city you live in.

It was noteworthy that the recent hurricane Irene was predicted with great accuracy. The weathermen were able to tell you when the rain would start to fall, the path of the storm, and the rate at which the hurricane would move on.

The irksome part was the incessant warnings of the newscasters. No other news story even had a chance. Harping and Hyping the Hurricane was deemed a necessity of the media.

For most of us, the hurricane caused little damage and we might have wondered why all the hype was necessary. Yet in reality, over 40 people lost their lives, and that is even though thousands of people were evacuated from their homes. Many lost power, many roads were washed away in Vermont and upstate New York. Travel back from camps was difficult to impossible for some.

Yet all in all, most of us emerged unscathed. Even so, we should heed the recent earthquake in the Northeast and the recent Hurricane as a wakeup call to do Teshuva. Elul time is always a time to reflect on world events as a reminder to us that Hashem runs the world. It is probably no accident that the 2 lives lost in NY unfortunately were members of the tribe.