Cone of Uncertainty

There's a hurricane bearing down on some popular vacation spots in Mexico...a serious hurricane that's wreaking all sorts of havoc. People have been getting warnings and you should never get hit by a train you see coming, but I do hope people make wise decisions.

What's gotten Tracy and I laughing has been the media coverage, and, in particular, a phrase that has gotten overused in said coverage: "Cone of Uncertainty."

You know what I'm talking about, right? When they show a map of the U.S./Mexico/Gulf of Mexico and a projected path of the hurricane using dots and lines going by islands and having times/days on it? And around that line is a lighter, widening path of where it could go, culminating in a wider end of the projection of landfall?

Well, the media guy has used the phrase so much lately, as in, "You can see where we've moved the cone of uncertainty further south today as it looks like Texas will not be hit, but rather the Cancun area by Monday morning. The cone of uncertainty started as far north as Brownsville, but now we're not likely to move the cone of uncertainty again as it looks like Dean will make landfall much further south."

I've decided, in honor of all this overusage of the term, that today I'll be Hurricane Brent.

"And, as you can see on the detailed map of Flower Mound, that Hurricane Brent will be heading towards the gym today, with his Cone of Uncertainty around the 3rd and 1st floors. We expect that around noon today, Hurricane Brent will move towards his own home again where he will have lunch, with the Cone of Uncertainty surrounding his bed or the sofa for his nap. The Cone of Uncertainty really goes haywire by 3PM where we can't say for sure if Hurricane Brent will be in the 2499 area grocery shopping or the Grapevine Mills area where he might go see a movie. Long-range forecast predicts Brent will be in his chair by 6:10PM for the Rangers game, but the Cone of Uncertainty shows us that if the early predictions are inaccurate, he could be in Grapevine watching a movie at that time."

I think we should all use "cone of uncertainty" whenever possible...and it will come up more than you might think.