The Wake County schools are closed again today, so Ruth and Ben get a four-day weekend. It’s back to work for me and Marie, however.
Driving to work this morning, I didn’t notice any damaged structures, or even road hazards caused by fallen tree limbs. (I’m sure there were some, but they had been cleared before I tried to use those roads.) I did encounter a couple of nonfunctional traffic lights. And the parking lot of my office building is carpeted with fallen leaves. That’s not unusual this time of year, except that these are green leaves.
So Isabel seems to have been no big deal as far as Raleigh is concerned. It was hazardous, but no more so than a major thunderstorm. Was the danger exaggerated by the news media? Gregg Easterbrook thinks so. Personally, I don’t regret any of the preparations our family made; even if they weren’t necessary for this particular storm, the exercise was a useful practice run for the next Hurricane Fran or Floyd. But Easterbrook has a point. If every tropical storm is heralded by the media as the end of the world, eventually people will stop paying attention. And when the next Fran or Floyd does come along, most of us won’t heed the warnings.