Major winter storm Thursday

Looks like we're going to get hit pretty hard Thursday.


Best guess:
2-3 inches of snow
.25-.4 inches of ice on top.

That should be enough to bring down some trees, as well as the obvious travel problems.

The forecast could turn snowier if temps don't start climbing faster in what's left of this afternoon.

Here is a nice Google map plotting temps. As of this writing (1:30 p.m.) Shelby's airport is at 35F with Crest Middle reporting 33F. The high today was supposed to be 40.

Thanks for the thanks

Been overwhelmed on kind words from folks about my new position as publisher of The Star (effective March 1). I will keep blogging, though -- it's crucial to our business's success that we keep communicating across all sorts of media and mediums.

Anyway, I'll get back to my regularly scheduled blogging now that the hubbub of the last few weeks has passed.

Thanks again,
Skip

This is going to be ugly

We should all be sympathizing with the folks in Oklahoma, who are about to endure a vicious ice storm.

Here is a link to some of the warnings up for the Oklahoma City area.

Please take note of this excerpt:

ICE ACCUMULATIONS OF ONE HALF INCH TO ONE AND A HALF INCHES ARE
EXPECTED WITH THE MOST SIGNIFICANT ACCUMULATIONS EXPECTED TO
EXTEND ALONG THE INTERSTATE 44 CORRIDOR. ICE ACCUMULATIONS AND
WINDS WILL LIKELY LEAD TO SNAPPED POWER LINES AND FALLING TREE
BRANCHES. THIS MAY RESULT IN EXTENDED POWER OUTAGES IN SOME AREAS.



Remember, our bad ice storms of the past few years were caused by about 1/2 inch of ice -- can you imagine three times that amount?!?!?

Not good.

Political correctness continues to run amok

This story really speaks for itself and is, I'm afraid, quite a statement on how political correctness has infected media coverage.

Materialism Christ-like?

I thought this was an excellent column by Tibor Machan.

He touches on the oft-overlooked point that participating in a free market is the most compassionate thing one can do for fellow man.

Keeping market conditions such that profits are high and, hence, employment is too serves the well-being of other men and women as much as anything we can do.

That's not to say we should purchase in excess or shirk our responsibilities to serve the poor, but to say that materialism is selfish is really to ignore basic realities of economics.

Covering a tragedy

We do lots of things at The Star that I love -- covering elections, sports, big weather stories, conducting investigations.

Covering tragedies is not on the list.

Covering tragedies involving people close to me or my friends or family is definitely not on the list.

Yet, it's part of the job, so we have worked hard over the weekend to cover the Chitty plane crash thoroughly yet sensitively.

I thought you'd be interested in a walkthrough of how it happened.

I was first called at home sometime in the mid-afternoon by our reporter on duty Sunday, Cherish Wilson.

She told me about the crash (normally, a small plane crash in Charlotte would merit only passing coverage in The Star), then dropped the bombshell -- she had received a tip that Jim Chitty and his wife were on board.

When my wife was an attorney doing title work, she crossed paths with Jim, so she knew where he fit into to the family trees of Shelby. That gave me some folks whom I could call that I knew very well -- this was important to me because I don't like to "spring" the news on unsuspecting family members unless they know who I am.

Anyway, while the folks I called couldn't give me immediate confirmation, after some calling around they basically said: "We're hearing what you're hearing."

Initially, the only discussion was of two people on the flight.

Soon, we received confirmation that the plane was indeed registered to Chitty.

It wasn't until late in the afternoon that we started hearing that there were possibly four passengers on board.

We contacted the funeral home which put us in touch with a relative in Wilmington who also confirmed that he was told by Charlotte police that four people perished.

Final confirmation of this fact didn't come from the NTSB until about 11 p.m.

In the meantime, we had lots of conversations with folks who had second- or third-hand knowledge of possible conversations between Chitty and the Charlotte control tower. As of yet, we have not been able to confirm those well enough to put them into print. Suffice to say, the consensus of these accounts is that there was some indication of trouble, but we'll have to wait for the preliminary report, which should come out next week.

We also chose our pictures for the paper judiciously. Some images published by other outlets showed personal effects and even clothes up in trees. We felt like those were not appropriate and added nothing to the story. I was also alarmed at some of the insensitive language used to describe the scene by at least one Charlotte TV outlet.

Anyway, if you have any questions or concerns about our coverage, please let me know through this blog or by e-mail to skipfoster@shelbystar.com


In the meantime, my thoughts and prayers go out to the Chitty family. We have a place on the orange bar at shelbystar.com for you to leave a message to them.