Burnt Orange Report

BORed: The Pine Sky Is Falling

By Matt Hardigree

As I started to type this post and let everyone know that nothing's really happening yet, BOOM. The first large branch succumed to the wind and rain and hit the ground. As far as I can tell, it didn't hit anything important. All of our cars are in garages (with the exception of my car) and the entire staff of the news organizations are on the beach somewhere... including the sports guys! Nothing like play-by-play of a hurricane.

For those who want to know how people in Houston are doing, Turn on CNN. In The Woodlands we're just on the edge of the storm and are getting some rain, a little but of trash debris and rain.

For those who aren't seeing local news, here are some highlights from the disaster-that-probably- won't-be-quite-as-bad- for-us-except-for-the-people- who-died-on-the-roads:

1. The Reporter From KHOU-TV (11) losing his KHOU hat and chasing it into the Gulf of Mexico "Arnesto, can you... awwww!"

2. An interview with someone who waited in line for an hour to buy two Mountain Dews. The highlight being the guy behind him holding up a 40 of Colt 45 exclaiming "You need beer man, you need beer." That's a Houstonian for you.

3. Radar, the Weather Dog. KPRC-TV (2) has a weather forecasting dog and, apparantly, people calling up seem to be concerned about the dog. Okay, we were concerned too. The dog is cute and he's a weather nerd and I'm glad he's okay.

4. The guy who lost his hat, just lost his photographer and then holds up the wind measurement device (anemometer) and says "I think it's about 12 mph." Dr. Neil Frank (former head of the National Hurricane Center) is wise enough to tell him that his device is probably miscalibrated or he's using it incorrectly.

I'm relocating to the living room, an update when something happens or I get drunk.

**UPDATE 1** I fixed some errors, but I'm blogging from a moderately inconvenient storm, man. Winds are starting to pick up, I imagine we'll be getting 40 or 50 mph winds in the next few hours and will relocate again to a completely boarded up room (though the TV doesn't have a remote.). If it gets any worse than that, I've got a phone cable that will reach to the bathroom.

I'd also like to add, in response to the nice comment below, that the MSM is doing a fairly good job here. Also, I'd like to add I'm not going to stand out in that shit for your edification.

**UPDATE 2** ABC-13 seems to have had a lost hat incident that I missed, because they just reunited their reporter on Galveston with her hat. If you see a lost hat with a news organization name on it, please send them to me. I feel like I should lose something. Ummm... OMG, my iced tea. Where did I put my Iced tea?

Oh, there it is. I've been reunited with my hat. Whew, that's great.