Since it's herricun season, a Jim Cantore story.

Aug 7, 2024, 11:23 AM

I covered a big hurricane once when I was a broadcast journo.
It came off the Yucatan as a 1, slowed down and spun up to a 4? by landfall. It packed quite a punch.

The producers sent me and the photog to a hotel a few miles inland. We set up on a 14th floor balcony. The eye was probably 30 miles? away. Our job was do to live hits from the balcony for our audience back home.

The hotel had those big industrial generators so all the TV crews put themselves up there. Live trucks/sat trucks all over the place.

Between hits, I'd look down to see if the networks (Weather Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, BBC, etc.) were live or not. You could tell because when someone goes live, the lights go on. When they cut back to the studio, the lights go off again.

I'm watching Cantore down there with his crash helmet do take after take, swaying/bracing in the wind. But between takes, he's got the helmet off and is standing stone still.

We saw maybe 90 mph winds where we were -- on the northwest side of the storm. Street signs would peel off and flail along the main drag, palm fronds would tear off and whip past us on the 14th floor. Rain coming in sideways. All that stuff. The hotel would sway/vibrate.

It was no big deal, really. But Cantore's out there doing the theatrical crap, whipping up the drama.

Now, a few of my colleagues were in the eye of the thing and they feared for their lives for a few hours. It was a long night for us all.

TL;DR:

Take it from me, while hurricanes (big ones, that is) do incomprehensible damage and destruction (depending on where they make landfall), they aren't the earth-killing events the TV folks like Cantore want you to believe they are.

It gets tired, watching them make every storm out to be the apocalypse. They're playing you. Sells ads.

People that survive such things rebuild, bounce back, and get on with living.