noaa news that was news to me!

 

Guess where I learned that news?

At Jalapenos of Skidaway, during the end of the S&K Friday Fiesta.

Guess who told me that news?

My sister-in-law Mary did!

She and Smitty had been with me (and Jeff) in 2004 when we all went to the Mexican Riviera together on a cruise.

That's the time when I went to the Hotel California, the same one that the Eagles sing about, on a side trip in Cabo San Lucas.

So very cool!!!

We also toured a coconut plantation and saw where the movie "When A Man Loves A Woman" when we were in Acapulco... or was that Puerto Vallarta? 

The memories are crystallized, just the names are a bit fuzzy.

Anyway, the reason I brought up that trip is this: Hurricane Erick.

Mary had asked if I knew about Acapulco getting hit by that hurricane.

Say what???

I did not know anything about that!

I asked her, "Have we already had five named storms and I missed all that?"

She had not thought of it like that.

But with Erick beginning with an "E", that's what we would have had to have. 

Had we already had five tropical storms with hurricane potential???

As it turned out, we have not.

In fact "we" - meaning those of us with coasts on the Atlantic Ocean or the Gulf Of Mexico - have not yet had even one named storm yet this year.

In fact "our" fifth named storm will be "Erin".

So, what gives???

Apparently, point of origin makes a difference.

If the hurricane forms off "our" coast, it will have the name "Erin".

Since the hurricane formed off the eastern Pacific coast, its name was "Erick".

One more thing: if the hurricane forms in the western Pacific, we call it a typhoon and it will have yet another name.

Tropical cyclones, like hurricanes and typhoons, occur worldwide, by the way, not just off the coast of the United States.

Our news outlets don't share a lot of that information, though.

It isn't because they don't find it to be news.

No, the issue is this: that type of news is not anything they can use to sell advertising to support their radio or TV stations, or their newspapers, of their journals.

Most people, as I've mentioned before, are more occupied with earning a living and keeping a roof over their heads.

They just want news that will affect their here and now, not stories about distant places with distant people they don't know personally.

Sure, they will tune in for tales about natural disasters or man-made ones, like war, and will especially do so if photographs are included or video news-bites.

That's how Mary found out about the hurricane in Mexico.

So that's how I found out about it, from her, but then I researched on BBC and got the whole story about that event, not just the bite.

Then I went to the National Hurricane Center to learn more.

That's what scientists do.

We keep looking in rabbit holes until we find the rabbit. 

Science!!!

(smile!)