Fade to Gray: Stop joking about storms

About 15 years ago I was listening to WGY radio and a nationally syndicated show hosted by a guy named Tom Leykis.

For those who don’t remember him, he was a combination of Howard Stern and Doctor Phil doling out advice on men, women and dating. To say he was a bitter guy was like saying the Grand Canyon is a hole in the ground; a bit of an understatement.

Anyway, old Tom would sometimes take his show on the road and one week he found himself in Albany broadcasting live for a couple of nights. One particular evening a buddy of mine who worked at WGY said to me, “After Leykis does his show a bunch of us are going over to the Lark Tavern in Albany for a beer, you should stop by and meet him.”

I had nothing to do so I went. The bar was surprisingly dead that evening and sure enough there was Leykis sitting by his lonesome looking annoyed. I introduced myself, told him I used to work in radio and we chatted a bit. As I suspected he was nothing like the blowhard I heard on the radio. I asked him why he was annoyed and he told me the bartender kept watching the Weather Channel and not tending to the business of getting patrons another drink.

Turns out there was a hurricane bearing down on some part of the country and the woman behind the bar was fixated on the coverage. Leykis finally asked her if she had family in the path of the storm? She said, “No, I’m watching because the storm is named after me.”

Yes the hurricane and the bartender had the same name.

The next night I listened to Leykis’s show to see if he’d mention his evening out on Lark Street and he spent 10 minutes berating the bartender. He said, “She’s the type of person who hopes for destruction so the next day the headlines will say, Hurricane Suzie decimates the east coast.” He was implying she was so self-absorbed she just wanted to see her name on the front of the newspaper.

I thought of that moment in time lately watching how people responded to the recent hurricane. Yes, many took things very seriously, as they should. But others, especially on social media, were sharing things that made jokes about the storm. Some shared memes with the so called “spaghetti models” showing Dorian going in a hundred different directions.

Others shared videos mocking the storm itself because it was so slow.

You would think after what we’ve seen hurricanes do to Puerto Rico, Florida and New Orleans in the past, people would realize there is nothing funny about these storms. I’m sorry but they’re really isn’t. I visited Prattsville, New York in Greene County shortly after Irene went through this region and trust me, nobody was laughing. The town was pretty much wiped away.

Even in my own home I remember my wife calling me from home during Irene saying, “The water is coming into the basement and it just won’t stop John.” I told her not to worry because it never goes beyond one room that is all concrete and she said, “You don’t understand, it did go through and there’s a foot of water everywhere.” I couldn’t leave work because of what I do for a living and it’s precisely those moments (when all hell is breaking loose) that I have to be a work.

All I could do was tell her to stay safe, buy a sump pump after work and slowly move all that water.

I’ve covered my share of calamities in this journalism job and I can tell you water damage is the worse. Fire is bad, true, but water is worse. Water goes everywhere and water ruins everything. I’ve only seen one storm like Irene come through here in my 56 years on this planet and that’s one too many in my book.

I know it’s customary to retire and move to sunny Florida in the declining years of one’s life but no thank you. I don’t like the heat in the summer and I certainly don’t want to worry about hurricanes every fall.

I also wish people would give meteorologists a break. It’s the weather, not a math equation and asking someone to predict exactly what a storm will do more than 48 hours out is fool’s gold in my opinion. That’s why they have those spaghetti models and why they so often don’t agree; too many unpredictable factors.

Although, I could live without the weather guy placing himself in the path of the storm and strapping himself to a palm tree. We get it; 120 mile per hour wind is bad. Just get inside please before a flying metal lawn chair hits you the head.

So hurricane season is now in full swing and we’ve already had our first monster. I know people like to be “cute” but go easy on the posts mocking these storms. Real people lose everything in them and there’s nothing funny about that.