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Fay, Thanks For The Tuna Fish, Barbecue Chips

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By STEVE OTTO

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 20, 2008

So thanks to Tropical Storm Fay, it's going to be tuna fish sandwiches for weeks.

Well, you can't blame the forecasters. All week they had the entire state blanketed in their "Cone of Uncertainty."

Fay could have landed anywhere between Joe's Stone Crab restaurant on Miami Beach and Bobby Bowden's hat in Tallahassee and they would have been covered.

We did our part around the house, stocking up on batteries, food and water. We have enough plastic water bottles left that if Fay had turned out to be more than she was we could have built a raft out of plastic bottles to escape.

Fay's sense of timing was a little off, rolling into Florida on the first day of school, which was a bigger cause for concern in Hillsborough County, where nobody was sure what the bus schedule was going to be and whether there would even be classes.

My wife the teacher and her teacher buddies spent the day calling each other Tuesday, less concerned about getting blown away by the storm as with whether there would be classes today.

I had my own concerns that if Fay looked serious enough the local station might cut into its Olympics coverage just as the beach volleyball finals were coming up.

Good For Some, Bad For Others

My guess is that Fay was a mixed blessing. Florida needed the rain, except over at the county reservoir where they are sticking Super Glue in all the cracks the people from Tampa Bay Water claim are nothing to worry about. I would be more confident if they weren't walking around with those masks and snorkels on their heads.

And I suppose it was good for business if you are a Home Depot or Publix manager, with runs on plywood, batteries, water and potato chips (my wife, the Frau, thinks we can survive for weeks on barbecue chips).

Business must have been pretty good. I even saw some gas lines as people waited to pay nearly four bucks a gallon.

A Model Of Spaghetti

Business was really good for weather forecasters. It's been a pretty slow summer so far, and it must be tough standing there repeating a seven-day forecast that says 89 degrees every day with a chance of showers.

It's always a good thing when they can haul out their "Cone of Uncertainty" visuals and put up those spaghetti prediction models that never seem to agree.

The bad news is that with the weather returning to the summer doldrums, it is now time for the two national political conventions. All the spaghetti models have already begun to focus on new hot air masses moving toward Denver and St. Paul, Minn.

Although Fay fizzled coming our way and now appears to be gaining strength as it moves northward, you have to figure the other thing we have to worry about will be the insurance companies blowing in from wherever it is they fester to tell us how much more we are going to be stuck for premiums. There will probably be a new surcharge just for the stress of trying to outguess those spaghetti models on the tube.

At least we have flashlights that work and the cupboard is stocked with tuna fish and barbecue potato chips. Life is a little different here in Florida.

Keyword: Otto Graphs, to read and comment on Steve Otto's blog.

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