Hurricane Hysteria

I would like to take this opportunity to address, what I call, hurricane hysteria. I live in south central Texas near San Marcos and Austin. For two days I have watched pure insanity.
I went to the local Dollar General to buy some batteries for my son's keyboard. There were no batteries in the store. There were no batteries in any store. Or bread. Bottled water. Non-perishables. I discovered that people bought every battery within a 45 mile radius.
I watched people pull in all they're lawn furniture (sorry Bill) and my new neighbors from Houston remove everything in their yard, period! I was sure they were going to begin boarding up windows any minute.
There were lines at the gas stations and grocery stores. People were stocking up and hunkering down. The hurricane was coming! The hurricane was coming!
Ya'll..........do you just not know where you live? Are you watching the Weather Channel, relating to the area and forgetting that you're not there anymore? OR WHAT?
We are 200 miles INLAND!! And on the west side of the hurricane. (The west side of the hurricane does not pack as big of an impact as the east side typically). Houston and Galveston are sending evacuees HERE to be safe.
It's going to be windy today. It's windy here a lot. My tin man used to blow over all the time from the wind. If we're lucky, and I do mean lucky because the river is dry, we will get a good rain. So far, no rain at all. Not a drop. Maybe daytime heating will spawn a shower with one of the hurricane bands. We can only pray.
So, ya'll need to get a grip! All of that hurricane hysteria energy has pushed away much needed rain. If you want to panic about a high wind situation, save it for when we are in an El Nino year and we have the 65 mph winds that tear up everything in your yard and trees. Those winds almost took off my roof. We have inclement weather in this area caused primarily from fronts coming through that can spawn tornadoes, electrical outages and floods. All those people that stocked up for Ike should be well prepared now for the cold fronts that will be coming down the road.
And by the way, I heard on the radio that the enormous surge at the gas pumps have now caused gas prices to go up. I have not heard yet about the damage the oil rigs in the gulf have sustained, if any.
People need to start thinking and using common sense and not panic mode. Break away from the mob mentality. I don't care what the local media says. In cases like this, they don't know. It's just conjecture. They're flying by the seat of their pants. I know this first hand.
I'm going to go water my garden now and mow my lawn.
My heart goes out to those people in Galveston and Houston who have lost property and lives.