from the editor.
by Neil Caudle
As you read this issue, perhaps with a view of the dusting of snow on your sidewalk or the lozenge of ice in your bird bath, the last thing on your mind may be hurricanes. You may, as you shiver, beg to differ with those who say that climate change is turning up the heat under tropical systems, boiling them up into monsters like Katrina or worse. You may believe, reasonably enough, that the data are inconclusive on that point. You may even be tempted to think, if you’ve survived a Floyd or a Fran or a Hugo, that we’re more or less safe around here—that a storm as cataclysmic as Katrina will never come to call. Don’t bet your life on it. Sooner or later, we’ll get nailed. On that, the experts agree.
Consider the map. North Carolina dangles a flimsy filament of its most populous and pricey real estate—its beaches—right into the line of fire. A Category Four or Five storm could blast a barrier island to pieces and wash the splintered houses out to sea. Correct that: not could, will. Another Floyd, or worse, will drive people onto their rooftops all across our coastal plain. Hard-charging storms like Ivan and Frances, coming in bunches, will unleash another round of raging torrents through our mountain valleys, ripping out houses and bridges and lives.
And what about the Piedmont? Surely, that will be spared? Those of us who spent the wee hours of September 6, 1996 cowering in closets, while eighty-foot oak trees toppled and crashed all around us, don’t like to think that one day soon a storm will throw a harder punch than Fran. But it will.
Chicken Little talk? Not according to the people who study these things. No one here at UNC is promising to save your beach house or your mountain cabin or your oak trees. But we’re looking for ways to save lives. Where will the flood waters travel? How high will they go? How can we drop a pod of people and high-tech equipment into a storm-blasted beach or stricken city and fire up the best emergency communications system in the world?
We’re sorry to interrupt your winter, but time and luck are running out. So we’d like you to know what we’re up to, and what is at stake.