"Fun" Forecast

Fiction with a real storm warning
Thursday, July 19, 2007

By EVELYN SHIH
STAFF WRITER

In 1985, then-young weather reporter Bill Evans [left, courtesy of plj.com] was looking dashing on the rooftop of a Mobile, Ala., hotel. The wind riffled through his hair -- which would have been an excellent effect if it hadn't been blowing at 45 mph. He was reporting on a coming hurricane, and the camera had to be secured with bolts and sandbags to keep it trained on his handsome face.

"The strongest part of the hurricane is still coming," said Evans, thinking to himself this was a really stupid idea. "We haven't felt the full force of the storm yet -- "

And as if on cue, a gust of wind knocked him clear out of the camera frame. "People were calling the television station asking if I was blown off the side of the building," said the Emmy Award-winning ABC weatherman. In fact, he had only been thrown against a retaining wall -- and even that was enough to give him a concussion. Evans continued to report through the evening, though his memory was fuzzy at best.

But his foolish attempt to best the weather was not for nothing. "I thought, I've got to put that in a book," he said.

Evans did just that in "Category 7." The novel, co-written with Marianna Jameson, imagines what would happen if a Category 7 storm -- Katrina was Category 3 -- were to hit New York City, tearing down skyscrapers and seriously flooding areas in Connecticut and North Jersey.

As far-fetched as it may sound to some, the weatherman says the scenario is not unrealistic.

In fact, though the tri-state area passes through most hurricane seasons without much death and destruction, it's due for another major storm in 2008. Research has shown that such storms come every 70 years, and the last massive hurricane, a Category 3, devastated parts of the Northeast in 1938.

"Weather repeats itself," explained Evans. Nowadays, instead of pulling live storm stunts, he has turned his attentions to spreading news of this gloomy disaster forecast. "All the signs are pointing toward New York as the next place a Katrina could happen if it's not prepared. The landmass is at a right angle; the stone under the ocean forces all this water into the city ..."

"I wanted to make sure that, after Katrina, what happened in New Orleans does not happen in New York and New Jersey and Connecticut," said Evans, who currently commutes to New York from Connecticut. "We can't do anything about the hurricane. It's our response to the hurricane is what we're going to be measured by."

"Category 7" is not his first attempt to raise hurricane awareness. While at WABC-TV, Evans put together a documentary that explained how the Big Apple might bruise in a serious storm: a completely crippled subway system, city history lost forever, and an estimated $150 billion in damage.

Evans also tried shopping the idea of a book that explained the meteorology behind mega-storms, but was dissuaded by publishers.

"They said, 'Well you know, only 8 percent of people who read books will read a science book. ... If you want to get your message out, you need to make it entertaining,' " Evans remembers. "So that's why I put it into a novel."

What's the smartest thing to do in a storm, whether it's natural or manufactured? Be prepared, and have a plan, says Evans.

And whatever you do ... don't get on top of a building with a camera.

E-mail: shih@northjersey.com

Copyright © 2007 North Jersey Media Group Inc.