Ike Closes Holiday World

You're arguing something completely different. You're arguing that bad things happen because of weather. Yeah, I get that. I'm arguing that in the Midwest, bad things happen because of weather and a tiny majority of people are ever seriously impacted by it, yet a loud majority expect every snowfall or storm squall line to mean impending doom. I've lived here for all of my 35 years (unfortunately), and I see it year after year after year.

A fallen tree nearly crushed me in my house, I crashed into a fallen tree on my bike and weathered a tornado that came within a half-mile of the pop-up camper I was in. I walked home from school in the blizzard of '78, and narrowly avoided serious accidents three times last winter alone. And you know what? It's like that every year. Some how I, along with everyone else, manage to suffer little more than an occasional inconvenience.

I already had that take on weather, but it was seriously reinforced after spending some time on the gulf coast last month. We've got it easy.

I know what you mean and I think it is part of the Midwestern culture. We are cautious, maybe even overly cautious. I am not saying that it was as devastating as what those near the coastline deal with during hurricanes. I am not so sure that I would say that we always suffer from occasional inconveniences though. We have had a few tornadoes that have destroyed many homes, some small towns and many lives. We had devastating flooding here in the Wabash Valley earlier this year that left many homeless. Half of Terre Haute was under water. Some are still living in FEMA trailers.

I have a feeling you have never lost your home from any sort of storm. If that is the case, you are indeed lucky, because I know of many who have just this past year here in Indiana.

My experience and emotion has nothing to do with it. And I do know someone who lost everything in a storm. It doesn't change the reality that it's incredibly rare and unlikely to happen to the rest of us.

I've been in a tornado...as a child. It took the roof off our house but none of us were injured. Scary stuff and I wouldn't want to go through it again. I was 5 but remember it vividly.

If Holiday World felt they had to close then they had to close. You don't decide you want to make LESS money one day unless you feel it is dangerous.

As for the "hype", I think Katrina is a cause of a lot of that. Everyone (government agencies, businesses, schools, etc) is on edge now b/c of the way Katrina was mishandled and the backlash that followed. Interestingly enough, the lesson wasn't learned.

You had kunckleheads (a LOT of them) who decided to ride out Ike on Galveston Island, amongst other places then calling last minute for rescue...putting others in harms way. Now you have people complaining that the help isn't there yet.

My newspaper's front page headline today:

"Texas Leaders Ask: Where's The Help?" Well, as of the headline it had only been 36 hours. That may seem like a long time to some who have never been through a storm. But, here in South Florida we are told to be prepared for NO HELP for 72 hours after a storm. We are instructed to have 3 days worth of supplies...and I'm sure ANYONE who lives in a hurricane prone area is given the same education.

So...why the bitc****? Well, it MUST be Government's fault because there is no such thing as personal responsibility and accountability anymore.

<Off Soapbox>

Jeff:

Maybe I am just slow, but where is the over reaction? First guy posts that Holiday world closed today because of high winds. Second guy posts that Cincy has some too and wonders if Kings Island closed. First guy post back that he has 50-60 MPH winds where he lives. Then you post saying over reaction.

Is the over reaction HW closing or these two guys discussing out of the ordianry weather that might impact amusement parks? I don't get it.

Jeff said:
You're arguing something completely different. You're arguing that bad things happen because of weather. Yeah, I get that. I'm arguing that in the Midwest, bad things happen because of weather and a tiny majority of people are ever seriously impacted by it, yet a loud majority expect every snowfall or storm squall line to mean impending doom. I've lived here for all of my 35 years (unfortunately), and I see it year after year after year.

As an Ohioan who's lived in other locations, I can say we do over react, but compared to there places it's almost like we don't care. Richmond VA we had outages of milk, bread, and other food at grocery stores when the rumors of a snow watch. I know people who parked their cars at the end of their driveways, canceled all plans, and even went as far as to cancel school. For a snow WATCH.

I don't think the midwest over reacts... I think we ALL over react.

The good news is that I went to HW on Saturday when it was sunny and 90! We wanted one last splash at SS for the year and had a great one. We almost went on Sunday due to the advertised "light attendance", but chose Saturday anyway. Yay for me!

As for the weather (I am 42 miles from HW), for 2 hours straight we had sustained winds of 45+ mph with peak gusts of 75. Things here are pretty messy with 3/4 of the city out of power. (Myself included) with everything projected to be back up in 72 hours. Thankfully, my work is up and running so I'm able to chat with you here.

Like Jeff is saying, it was pretty bad but nothing that we don't see at least once every year or so. And definitely not as bad as those in Texas / Gulf of Mexico have it right now. But HW (and KI) did the right thing. There's absolutely no way you could do anything outside (let alone run a theme park) while it was going on yesterday. And I'm sure it was a trememdous mess afterwards as well. Good thing they have 5 days to clean up. They'll need it.

depotrat said:
Is the over reaction HW closing or these two guys discussing out of the ordianry weather that might impact amusement parks? I don't get it.

Am I really being that unclear? I said a park should close if they think it's not a good idea to run rides.

What I take issue with is the general sky is falling nonsense that precedes every weather event in this part of the country. It's not connected to what a park decides to do.

Here in central Ohio, every time there is the threat of a couple inches of snow there seems like a mass panic driven by the media sets in.

That said, yesterday was nowhere near a typical storm for the midwest. My family and I were at Holiday World yesterday, and weren't happy to have driven that far to be sent home after a couple hours. But I don't disagree with the decision to close--things were flying everywhere.

We decided to visit Marengo Cave(??) on our way home, which is about 5 miles off the interstate. We had to drive around trees on the road, wait for some trees to be cleared at one point, and saw power lines down, shingles and siding blown off houses, etc. (The cave had lost power as well, but we were able to take a short tour with flashlights.)

In Louisville, a tree was downed across I-71 so we were forced onto the city streets. Similar damage there--no power and downed trees blocking streets everywhere. We hit many closed streets causing us to backtrack many times before finally getting back on the freeway. Louisville's mayor warned that some residents should expect to be without power for days. (He also talked about the golf event which I found funny.)

The rest of the drive home was spent trying to find an exit with power--our kids wanted food. The few places with power had huge crowds, so we figured we'd do with what was in the car. I kept expecting to drive out of the problem area, but we never did. But we were/are one of the lucky ones with power--the news this morning was 1/2 the people (in the area) had no power and it could be days before everyone is back on.

No, it wasn't a hurricane. And with the weather now (cool, dry) it isn't a big deal for most. But it also wasn't an everyday/year occurance for the midwest. After all, we don't live in a hurricane zone, or an earthquake zone, whatever. We tend to get localized damage from a tornado, or thunderstorm, etc. This was one big windstorm for us.

How windy was it? Shingles/siding in this area tends to be a minimum of 70 mph grade. Poor installation would reduce that, but I'll just say I think gusts were well over 50 mph in the areas with damage I saw.

My kids still said it was a great day! Lucky we got to the park early so they got many rides in and we even spent some time in the waterpark before we had to leave. No Voyage for the wife and I, however.

Just for the record, we all know I live in the Dayton area and just a day after making these comments, I think some greater force was trying to teach me a lesson.

It was bad, Jeff. No one is overreacting. I've done the hurricane thing and this is not unlike that at all. We had gusts as high as 79mph in the area. Everything is a mess. Reports from the different electric providers in the area have the estimated total number of customers in SW Ohio without electricicty at around 800,000 (225,000 in the Miami Valley) and they're saying it'll take as long as a week for everyone to get it back. Everything is canceled today. Water is affected in some communities - find ice and water at stores is getting difficult. Most traffic lights still aren't working. Large trees down, damage to structures - the building behind me had a chimney structure knocked down from the roof, the big tree in front of my wife's hotel was ripped out of the ground and her roofing started ripping off in a couple of places. We just got power back a little bit ago (I knew we'd be among the first - there's too much retail around us).

Is it the same as what's happening in the Gulf? Of course not, but it is the closest thing I've seen to an actual hurricane since being in one...the difference is this area doesn't build for them. It takes a lot less to do similar damage.

Here's some of what happened in Dayton.

Damage reports

more images (#26 has a round up in it so it's related :) )

I've only been here a little over two years, but I'm being led to believe that for this area it's a pretty unique weather event:

In his 25 years in Ohio, Meteorologist Mike Ryan cannot recall anything like the events that took place in the Dayton area Sunday. “At least from a weather standpoint, it was interesting how unusual this was for this area,” Ryan said. “Everything was set up for this to take place, but we had never seen anything like it before.”

Jeff, it took me to read several posts to see your point. If what I'm gathering is correct you're saying that whenever any sort of storm is coming by the meteorologists around here act as if the end times are here. Yet, the end result (as far as the amount of destruction) is something that pales in comparison to the destruction of a hurricane. If that is your point though, I have to somewhat disagree with it. I think they have a responsibility to warn us of the worst so that we can be prepared. I don't think preparing by having food and water is overreacting. I learned my lesson a few years ago during a snow storm after not having adequate food for a couple of days. Not because I couldn't get out to the store, but because there was nothing in stock.

I was explaining to my wife yesterday about the difference in a hurricane and a tornado. Typically a hurricane that will have sustained winds of up to 160mph have insane amounts of rain and last for hours, a tornado is more concentrated in one area and can have winds as high as 300mph and last several minutes. In the end though, the destruction is just as terrible, maybe not as widespread as a hurricane but its still bad. On top of that, we aren't given a warning for days in advance like we typically see with hurricanes.

Yesterday was pretty crazy, and driving into work today felt like I was driving through a war zone. Our town LaGrange saw 78mph gusts. In the Cleveland area there are about 300,000 homes and businesses without power. One of our coworkers is expecting to get power back on Wednesday because of the damage done where he lives.

~Rob Willi

Lord Gonchar said:
Just for the record, we all know I live in the Dayton area ...

Well then...take a listen to this!

LOL! No offense, I actually had no problem with Dayton.

There is nothing that will create more property damage than a hurricane. I used to work at a company that wrote claims software for property insurance. It was used by claim adjusters to go out and figure out the payout for insurance after a hurricane.

Our worst days were always the ones following a hurricane. Many people don't remember the series of hurricanes that ravaged Florida the year before Katrina, but those storms had our system so bogged down that new claims were not going into the system for two days (the standard response time is normally under a minute). Katrina nearly killed our system even though we tripled it's capacity.

My boss was a bit of a geek when it came to statistics. He would chart activity rates to the point where he could tell when certain adjusters were on lunch breaks. Using historical data as far back as the eighties he found that an earthquake or a wildfire comes no where close to the destruction done by a direct hit from a hurricane. Not even the Northridge quake or the Frisco quake in the eighties generated half as many claims as a category one hurricane would.

This from the guy who thinks the media ruins everything, now defending it? I'm shocked! :)

When I made my first post in this thread, there was no indication that anyone was going to see anything horrible. Furthermore, I still don't see how down trees and power outages, which is still mostly what we're talking about, compare to what's going on in Texas. I'm not suggesting that it's any less real to people who do have clean-up to do, but look at Hoffman's follow up... he was the first to chime in and in the end had nothing serious at all. That is what I'm talking about.

Jeff said:How is it that people in the Midwest who have arguably the most diverse weather in the country also over-react the most to every change in it?

Since A_hoffman and I were the only ones who posted prior to your note quoted above, I'd like to know exactly what over-reaction you're talking about? My comment that KI might shut down?

Diverse != extreme, and the weather we had yesterday was the most extreme, sustained winds the region has seen in decades, if not this century. Others have pointed out the 70+mph winds, the 1.5 million customers without power, the people killed by falling trees (3 in Cincinnati alone).

You know, perhaps maybe you UNDER-reacted?

I give up. I'm an insensitive dick, OK? Is everyone happy now?

It wasn't directed at you or anyone else. But 99% of the time weather in the Midwest is a non-event that results in little more than giddy TV weather guys sitting on the air for hours looking at their SuperDuperDoppler3000 radar drawing circles around colored blobs. Is that not a true statement?

That is absolutely a true statement. But they still inform us of what could happen, what if they didn't?

I see that I don't need to cite any additional examples of what I feel about the media as you just about summed it up. That is, when your argument is blown to smitherines that you simply just attack the messenger and not have anything else to explain yourself. If you throw it up enough times eventually some of it will stick. :)

I don't think you're an insensitive dick, I just think your statement about overreacting about the weather as being a bad thing is something that I have to somewhat disagree with it. I do agree though that the spoogefest that ensues with weathermen over bad storms is pretty accurate.

~Rob Willi

HeyIsntThatRob? said:
I do agree though that the spoogefest that ensues with weathermen over bad storms is pretty accurate.

That is dead on. The problem is there are people out there that will watch that crap. My wife watched over six hours of weather-porn on Fox News the evening that Ike made landfall. I kept wishing that Geraldo Rivera would have been hit by a stray tree blowing around in the wind. :)

I still remember when my sister-in-law moved out to L.A. She thought it was hilarious when the weather forecaster was warning viewers about oncoming rain, and how if they didn't have to go out maybe they should just stay in.

Re: "little more than giddy TV weather guys sitting on the air for hours looking at their SuperDuperDoppler3000 radar drawing circles around colored blobs"

I really couldn't say, as I don't generally pay attention to the weatherguys around here... I look at the maps USGS and NOAA provide and make my own mind up :)

I *do* know that I don't make much fuss about the weather unless it's deserving, which is why I took exception to your "over-reacting" comment. I knew it was going to be bad when I checked maps Sat and saw Ike's carcass was going to be hitching a ride on the incoming cold front, but I didn't think it was going to get as ridiculous as it did. I've lived in Ohio 35 of my 36 years and have seen plenty of good Midwestern thunderstorms, but yesterday was far worse because it lasted 4-5 hours solid (t-storms usually blow through in 15 minutes), and it just got more intense as the afternoon wore on. South winds 50-60 sustained with gusts topping 70. Cincinnati was in the perfect (bad) spot - just east of the low that used to be Ike as it went by. I think barometric pressure was below 29.4 briefly .. unusually low for the region.