Hurricane Dorian was a revealing event

Growing up in Savannah, one always felt a collective, ingrained fear of hurricanes. I don’t remember a really impactful one from my youth but I do recall seeing windows boarded or taped up and sandbags being filled in preparation for a coming storm. Of course, that was long before the breathless, diminutive Jim Cantore and The Weather Channel (TWC) prepped us for looming disasters weeks in advance.If somebody reports more than a half dozen clouds off the Horn of Africa, Jim goes on full alert status. He has more wind than the big bad wolf and Hurricane Dorian, which threatened Georgia’s port city last week, combined.After Friday night football, I headed to Savannah to help my parents prepare for the storm and a possible evacuation. I took a small weather radio with a hand crank to power it, hip waders, assorted ropes, etc. We lashed things down and watched college football and the weather. Hurricane Dorian did not move, preferring instead to pummel The Bahamas.One of the TWC talking heads reported being on Abaco was like being caught in an F4 tornado for 30 plus hours. Having covered tornados for 40 years and being in close proximity to several, I just could not imagine that.So we waited and waited and waited to see what Dorian would do. It was stressful and frustrating. I have tried to learn to see lessons revealed in every experience and this presented a great lesson in patience.Finally, after three days, we got out of there to head inland and that, too, proved revealing.In this space, I have often opined that government does very few things well and almost any endeavor would be best left to private businesses and entrepreneurs. I learned that is not always the case.We hit I-16, a roadway with which I have much experience. I pretty much learned to drive on it before it was completed. I watched nocturnal drag races on uncompleted sections of it in Treutlen and Laurens County while in high school. I had seen the traffic arms that close ramps in the event of an evacuation but had never observed them in use.As we headed for the interstate, I was dreading a long grind in bumper-to-bumper traffic. I was wrong. After a brief bottleneck around I-95, we cruised at 75 mph. for much of our trip. It was odd seeing the eastbound lane empty. Only buses, presumably carrying evacuees, were headed west in the east bound lane.State troopers, motor carrier compliance officers and local deputies were aligned all along the route to make sure things ran smoothly and run smoothly they did. I was amazed and thankful. Whomever the people who put together the evacuation plan are, I salute them. The operation ran like a well-oiled machine.After a couple of days, my parents and other family members returned to their homes. Yards were trashed but there was no damage and the power never even went out.It was one of those instances when it was better to be safe than sorry. The final revelation was Cantore and his ilk are often wrong and their coverage is more about hype than providing real information. Hoisting a moistened thumb into the wind would have provided an equally accurate forecast.