Disaster coming
This afternoon, after I wrote my last post, I noticed that the NOAA website was going haywire. Was down for awhile, then up, but when it was up it was goofy. One time it showed a river chart from hours before, another time from days before. Never the current one. I finally got a number for the Mid-Atlantic River Forecast Center in State College and called them to find out why they were having problems on such a crucial day. I had first called NOAA in Washington, D.C., but they weren't able to say.
The forecaster who answered said that their computer network was crap and should have been replaced a long time ago. He said the forecasters had been complaining for a long time, but that higher-ups were unreponsive. No money, they were told. No money. I told him the public in Harrisburg had come to depend on their website to know what was going on when floods threatened. He said the public was going to pay the price for NOAA's lack of attention to its network.
I then asked him what the latest crest forecast was for Harrisburg. Now at that time, I was expecting him to say 18-20 feet, because that's what the National Weather Service was saying and that's what the city of Harrisburg was saying. "25 feet," he said. I nearly fell off my chair. "At Harrisburg?" I asked. "Yes." I went to tell the city editor, Mike Feeley. This caused no small degree of consternation, because it was at variance with the official story. I called back MARFC and talked to another forecaster, who told me the same thing. I duly reported that news to the editors. I e-mailed Randy King, the city spokesman, to see what he'd heard. He finally got through to MARFC and confirmed the bad news himself.
Here is the latest chart, I think: read it and weep. And it may not stop at 25. The city is now saying the flood will crest as high as 30 feet, putting it just short of the devastating Agnes Flood of 1972. God help us if that happens. My wife and I have just spent several hours moving stuff up from the basement. Now we're starting on the living room. It's raining like Noah knew.