Hurricanes are the latest discovery of radio stations and they are being taken up in a big way. To me, Nature is continuously absorbing— that is, she is a twenty-four-hour proposition, fifty-two weeks of the year— but to radio people, Nature is an oddity tinged with malevolence and worthy of note only in her more violent moments. The radio either lets Nature alone or gives her the full treatment, as it did at the approach of the hurricane called Edna. The idea, of course, is that the radio shall perform a public service by warning people of a storm that might prove fatal; and this the radio certainly does. But another effect of the radio is to work people up to an incredible state of alarm many hours in advance of the blow, while they are still fanned by the mildest zephyrs. One of the victims of Hurricane Edna was a civil-defense worker whose heart failed him long before the wind threatened him in the least.
E.B. White, “The Eye of Edna,” which first ran in the New Yorker in September 1954 (via yayitsrob)
(via theatlantic)
Daily chart: America’s costliest hurricanes. Hurricanes that tear up America’s east coast in the way Irene did are rare, but certainly not unheard of. How much damage it caused remains to be seen.
Margaretville, N.Y., struck by Hurricane Irene-related flooding. Also, Gov. Andrew Cuomo was driving around in this, for some reason.
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