Why do we anthropomorphize the weather? The standard convention of naming large tropical storms began as way to simply keep track of multiple simultaneous events, but it also has the unusual side effect of allowing people to believe that the storm is literally out to get them. Hurricane Ike is currently "ravaging" South Texas with his "ferocious" winds and "roaring" floodwaters and will soon spread his "wrath" across the whole Gulf Coast. This time it's personal!
Now we obviously don't want to make light of the situation the individual residents find themselves in, because it is personal for someone with a basement that is now underwater. But if you want to tell the human drama of natural disaster, is it really necessary to turn the low pressure system into a sentient being with a grudge? Hurricane Katrina Changed Everything, of course, but a little perspective on "catastrophic" storms might be in order. The death toll currently stands at three (one was a nursing home patient and an other a 10-year-old struck by a tree branch) but, sad as that is, it's still less than the death toll from that California train crash—another disaster that the cable news networks have all but ignored.
Oh, and the big Galveston Hurricane of 1900? 8,000 dead and the town was nearly erased from the map. That rain cloud must have been pissed.
[Check the local coverage from the Houston Chronicle.]
A summer rainstorm just enveloped Manhattan. 
The date: August 7th
