Walking The Line Between Preparation And Panic

There is one thing that we can absolutely tell you for sure - it is going to rain over the next few days. Anything that you're hearing outside of that, mostly thanks to social media, is anything from best guess forecasts to pure speculation.

Worse than that though, over the past day in particular, I've seen a number of well respected media outlets whipping people into a panicked frenzy with not only doom and gloom forecasts, but comparisons to the worst storm in most of our collective memories.

I've seen everything from - "Major Impact On NJ Likely As Joaquin Strengthens", which, by the way, was on a well respected statewide news service. It's ridiculous in the sense that we are still many days away from the storm being close to us. At this point, we really don't know what kind of impact the storm will have on us, major or minor.

But even worse was the one saying that Joaquin is, "potentially following the course of Sandy in 2012", this one from a national news outlet.

They can defend themselves by using the word "potentially", but let's be honest, all most of us will see is "following the course of Sandy".

Being prepared is not only a good thing, but vital. Causing panic however, is obnoxious at best and unethical at worst.