I have become enamoured of television’s Weather Channel ever since the twins, Katrina and Rita, showed up on the scene. Until then, I was only mildly interested in what the temperature was in my neighborhood and didn’t particularly care at all about storm fronts or cold fronts elsewhere.
I live in an area that might receive an inch or two of residual rain from the hurricanes, but it’s nothing that poses life-threatening problems. So I could continue to turn my mental back on rain and wind elsewhere. But for some reason I can’t. I watch the misery of the people involved and am captivated by the idea that natural disasters still wreak havoc, even though we have put a man on the moon, seen the USSR disintegrate, and found the formula for DNA.
On various TV channels, I’ve watched the displaced residents of New Orleans search for shelter, only to be uprooted if they went to Texas for relief. I’ve seen the snake lines of cars trying to leave Houston and Galveston, only to become a vast, skinny parking lot. I’ve watched buses attempt to load passengers, Coast Guard members attempt to rescue survivors, politicians attempt to exert damage control in more ways than one.
Regardless of these efforts and their portrayal on other channels, the Weather Channel is the empirical evidence that we are at nature’s mercy. It shows the storm in full color, describes weather prognosticators who fly into its middle to gather data, tracks its speed, and attempts a semi-prediction regarding landfall. And not one politician can make a whit of difference as far as Mother Nature is concerned.
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