EDITORIAL: A tropical trick: Lessons from Fay

What we missed justifies what we went through.

Forecasters and media types are always worried about the crying wolf phenomenon that accompanies weather events — or non-events — like this latest imperfect storm. Declarations that “I will never believe a forecaster again,” like those found on this page, are truly discouraging, short-sighted and dangerous.

A fellow online commenter named kayak4life makes the best case for the so-called hype in an Aug. 24 post.

“Here is a sample of what we missed from Fay ... just in case you decide to feel grateful instead of judgmental.

These are the latest headlines from the Tallahassee Democrat.
•5:18 p.m.: Comcast works to restore cable throughout Big Bend. As of early Sunday morning, there were 3,000 calls for service outages...
•3:10 p.m.: Crooked Road being evacuated
•2:22 p.m.: Flooding, traffic: Section of Capital Circle NE could be closed up to one week.
•2:14 p.m.: FHP: Fatal crash in Jefferson County appears to be weather-related.
•1:55 p.m. Wakulla: Sopchoppy river residents ordered to evacuate.”

That could have been us.

This storm had more twists and turns than a good mystery novel — it was a real wheregoesit.

But one tricky storm doesn’t dismiss forecasters string of successes from past predictions. Weather experts were pretty spot on with hurricanes Dennis and Ivan.

Fay was a blowhard. But it was truly a dry run for the area.

It only takes a jog to the left or right for a storm to put us in deep water.