A few days before our family vacation to the Florida Panhandle late last month, The Weather Channel blew up with dire warnings about a potential tropical storm forming in the southern Gulf of Mexico. By the time we packed the Toyota a couple of days before Memorial Day, the storm had a vague shape and a proper name: Alberto.
Coverage of the storm throbbed nonstop on The Weather Channel, complete with ominous graphics about Alberto's possible track. It seemed to be heading directly for our destination, Santa Rosa Beach, Florida. It was the first named storm of the season, and The Weather Channel personalities were having trouble containing their enthusiasm.
The terms of our condo rental were plain on the subject of weather-related cancellations. Without a mandatory evacuation order - a directive often associated with strong hurricanes - we were on the hook for our paid-in-advance condo fee.
The night before we were scheduled to leave for the beach, we gathered as a family.
I reported that after studying all the available forecasts, it looked like the most probable outcome for our beach trip was heavy rain for a few days, accompanied by strong (but not hurricane-force) winds and a modest storm surge of 2 to 4 feet.
"If worse comes to worst, a car will outrun a storm," I said in my closing argument in favor of heading south the next day. It was a "speak now" moment, and I counted nods all around the family room. Even if we had to cook frozen pizza and play cards for a week, all of us were game.
Meanwhile, there were plenty of friends and acquaintances who were postponing or canceling beach trips. I didn't blame them. It was just that our group was willing to take a small risk for a big reward.
I've noticed for some time that weather is a commodity, and there is no money to be made in underselling the worst-case scenario. Spending my adult life in the media, I am quite familiar with monetizing bad news. I offer as evidence bedbugs and any number of infectious diseases that were supposed to ruin the world any minute.
As it happened, heading into the teeth of Alberto wasn't so bad. In fact, at the point of impact, Alberto's bite was more like a toothless gnaw. We endured a day and a half of rain, which we spent outlet mall shopping and playing endless hands of Spades. Access to the ocean was restricted, but our two sons bided their time skimboarding and digging holes in the sand.
Meanwhile, after a couple of days of self-imposed Weather Channel exile, I turned back in to see what was happening. A tendril of dry air had invaded Alberto and stunted its growth. As a result, the main threat had changed to inland flooding. The ominous tone of the broadcasts had clearly changed. We later learned that a tree fell across the street in front of our home on Signal Mountain as a result of storm-related rains, an irony that I thought proved my point.
Accurate weather forecasting is one of the gifts of the modern age. I recently read a book about a hurricane in Galveston, Texas, in 1900 that killed about 8,000 and left 30,000 homeless. Today's advance-warning weather technology makes that sort of disaster much less probable. Although there were about 1,800 fatalities associated with Hurricane Katrina, it would have undoubtedly been much worse without modern forecasting.
Still, sometimes I think we have become enslaved by the weather apps on our smartphones. For example, an app that purports to tell you that there is precisely 78 percent of showers at 2 p.m. next Tuesday is suggesting a degree of precision that simply does not exist.
I have been to soccer games where parents are so glued to their cellphones they no longer trust thunder and lightning as harbingers of a storm.
As in everything, moderation is key. Life is not risk-free. And running from even a whiff of risk may be the plague of our age.
Contact Mark Kennedy at mkennedy@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6645.