From the Editor: Gulf Coast weather keeps making news

Remember when talking about the weather was considered boring?
Now the weather is news, big news, on a regular basis.
Is that a function of climate change? You’ve got your opinion on the subject. Everyone does in this energy-dependent yet ecologically sensitive state.
It’s best not to get into those opinions in a column that appears in the news section. That belongs on the editorial page. Besides, I only have about three opinions, and two of them are about drinking beer from aluminum cans.
But it’s beyond dispute that the weather keeps making news:
—President Donald Trump is another topic that generates strong opinion. The latest to-do is over whether the president altered a weather map to show that Alabama really was at risk from Hurricane Dorian.
At some point, the president listed Alabama as among the states in Dorian’s sights. By then, the predictions said the storm would make a turn northward along or just off the Atlantic coast, far east of Alabama.
The president than made a presentation with a big map to show he wasn’t wrong after all. You’d recognize the map as a standard National Hurricane Center five-day hurricane-tracking cone, with a black semicircle added to the leading edge. The semicircle showed the storm headed for Alabama.
Reporters have speculated that the semicircle was added with a Sharpie. How they know that, who can say? But this Sharpie would point squarely at the president. The president has the same relationship with his Sharpie that Luke Skywalker has with his light sabre.
The president still insists he was right about Alabama.
Now, the president’s poll numbers are weak around the country, but they’re strong in our piece of the U.S. coast stretching from Texas to Florida. He may have stepped in something here.
He disrespected the cone.
We are cone people. Sure as sausage goes with red beans, we’ll spend a few days, or a week, or maybe more at the end of every summer looking at that familiar cone as a tropical storm or hurricane barrels its way across the Atlantic or around the Gulf.
You may not have complete faith in the National Hurricane Center predictions — remember the 30 inches we were supposed to get from Hurricane Barry? — but you will watch the cone.
No one should mess with the cone.
—Berwick’s Town Council settled on a flood control plan Wednesday at the end of a lively meeting.
You may remember that after the June 7 flash flood, 39 homes in the town’s Country Club Estates Subdivision had water in them.
Some of the residents uttered the phrase we hear more and more these days: “It never used to flood like this.”
The town’s engineer came up with a plan that involved making a ditch bigger and improving the storm drain system. It also included changes that would lower the flooding along Hogan and Palmer streets but raise levels elsewhere until all the work is completed.
That went over about the way you’d expect: Why would you want to make things worse?
The final plan is to do things in an order that will avoid the temporary risk of increased flooding. It’ll cost Berwick, where the estimated population is just below the 5,000 mark needed to become a city, about $1.6 million. The town will be looking for grants.
—The spring’s flash floods created the same sort of problems south of the railroad tracks in Patterson.
Like Berwick, Patterson will need some substantial engineering to alleviate flooding. Like Berwick, Patterson probably will get a seven-figure bill for the work. Like Berwick, Patterson will probably be looking for grant assistance.
—Lee Dragna of the St. Mary Gravity Drainage District No. 2 board recently urged the Morgan City Council to support completion of the levee improvement project.
The district has been in charge of most of the work to improve the levees surrounding Morgan City. But the portion in front of Lakeside Subdivision is up to the St. Mary Levee District, and that part has been going more slowly.
Tim Matte, the Levee District director, says the district is looking for the best, most affordable solution.
The levee improvements are designed to provide the protection needed to satisfy the people who run the National Flood Insurance Program, the chronically underfunded program that makes it possible to get a mortgage in the most flood-prone areas.
Federal support for the flood insurance program has been gradually decreasing, leaving homeowners to pick up more and more of the premiums, which can now reach the thousands of dollars per year.
Without good levees, the fear is that flood insurance costs will be unaffordable for Morgan City people.
So the weather may be unpredictable. But it’s not boring anymore.
Bill Decker is managing editor of The Daily Review.