Judging the reaction, I don’t feel that some really understand the impossible challenge that is managing a situation like this. Both as a meteorologist and as a civil servant.
As my old Lagrangian Dynamics professor used to say “a weather forecast 3 days into the future is a guess with extra steps, 2 days it’s likely wrong, 1 day it’s likely right, 0 days and you can look out of your window.” The situation goes from completely indiscernible chaos to a game of statistics in a very short space of time.
You see a hurricane like this forming three days out, the forecasts will get more certain as time passes, but you don’t have time. There are millions of people whose lives depend on you weighing the odds and giving them advice as soon as is practicable. If you delay, people will die. And every hour you wait matters.
Anybody who doesn’t understand the weight of that responsibility can only have a near sociopathic lack of empathy or they simply don’t understand the inherent uncertainty involved. The people asking folks to evacuate are human beings who quite rightly didn’t want to wake up tomorrow being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of people because of their inaction.
