” ‘These Weather Channel guys are treated like frigging royalty,’ I was told by a satellite-truck operator [working on Hurricane Floyd in 1999]. ‘Usually, local people treat the media like scum — vultures preying on a disaster. But local people love these Weather Channel guys.
” ‘When we were in North Carolina for Dennis ‘ — the hurricane that had threatened the East Coast a week earlier — ‘people were coming to the truck with plates of ribs, cold drinks, pie, you name it. It was amazing.’ ”
— From “Flash of Genius: And Other True Stories of Invention” by John Seabrook (2008)