Take right lesson from Earl

As of this writing, Hurricane Earl was forecast to strike a glancing blow as it passed well east of the region Friday evening with high surf, blustery winds and sporadic power outages.

The brush with Earl should serve as a reminder that this region remains vulnerable to a strike by a major hurricane. It is a matter of when, not if. Earl came close. Had weather patterns shifted ever so slightly, the hurricane would have been drawn more directly north at greater speed and with less time to lose its intensity.

Unfortunately, what many may take away instead is a false sense of security.

When a hurricane devastated southern New England in 1938, killing about 600 people and causing $40 billion in damage measured in today's dollars, the problem was a lack of information. New Englanders had no clue the storm was coming, no chance to prepare or evacuate vulnerable coastal communities.

Ironically, the problem today may be too much information, or at least too much yammering. Satellite and computer technologies now allow forecasters to track tropical storms weeks in advance of any threat to the continental U.S. On 24-hour news and weather networks, forecasters talk endlessly about what could happen. The networks stage news personalities on placid beaches who point to the sea with dire warnings of the waves that could come crashing.

When the storm turns out to be no more than an annoyance, and in this region that literally will happen about 99 out of 100 times, people reasonably dismiss it as all a bunch of hype. The concern is, that when the real one comes, too many may dismiss the warnings and remain in harm's way.

And it will come. At some point the meteorological tumblers will fall in place, quickly sending a major hurricane up the coast. Prior to 1938, the region had not seen a storm of such intensity since 1815. And prior to that strike, New England had not encountered a major hurricane since 1635. Sediment samplings, showing beach sand washed inland by only the largest of hurricanes, suggest that massive hurricanes stretch into antiquity every century or two.

But never in history has the coastline seen the degree of development that exists now. When a major hurricane again threatens the region, the evacuation will be challenging and the damage immense.

Don't be lulled by the hype. When the day comes for mandatory evacuations, heed them. And if it turns out again to be not so bad, that's all to the better.