This September, at least on the east coast, we have been inundated with storm-related coverage. Hurricane Lee was the top weather headline for multiple weeks as it churned all the way across the Atlantic, cycling between a tropical storm and a Category 5 hurricane and back over open water. But its threat was ominous enough to cause Massachusetts and Maine governors to declare states of emergency, sending Nantucket boat owners into a frenzy as they rushed to dry-dock their vessels ahead of the potential storm surge. While Lee’s chaos was brewing, a fast-moving evening cold front brought a line of severe thunderstorms, including a few spin-up tornadoes, which triggered tornado warnings for most of southeast New England. Not much damage resulted from these tornadoes, just a few downed trees here and there along paths that spanned between 2-3 miles of Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts. Likewise, Hurricane Lee brought only a wave or two of blustery rain to the eastern portions of Massachusetts and Maine as it had already fizzled into a post-tropical depression, and a single person was killed in Searsport, ME when a tree branch fell on his car, a freak accident in an otherwise manageable storm.
Halfway around the world, there have been far worse disasters in northern Africa that we’ve heard comparatively little about. First, a powerful 6.8-magnitude earthquake shook Morocco on September 8th, causing 3,000 fatalities and widespread damage in and around Marrakesh (made worse by the rock and mortar architecture, which is particularly prone to crumble and collapse). Later in the same week, Mediterranean Storm Daniel poured 6-9 inches of rain on northeastern Libya, causing a poorly engineered dam to break and flood the coastal city of Derna. Tragically, about 4,000 people have died and 40,000 more have lost their homes, in a place that has no formal governmental means to help people recover. I’ve seen headlines linking Hurricane Lee – a typical September cyclone in the Atlantic – to climate change, while much more pressing are the climate implications of the warm Mediterranean that fueled Daniel’s historic rainfall. I understand giving precedent to storm stories closer to home, especially since their warning information is actionable; but I wish the public was also given the context that some events have far more catastrophic outcomes than others. With that context, I am grateful to live in a place with effective weather prediction, thorough warning communication, enforceable engineering standards, and few true natural disasters – the ultimate blessing of security that I have sometimes taken for granted.
Worldly Observations 