It’s a variation of doom porn.
A lot of people need to believe that anything really bad must somehow be unprecedented and that they are somehow special for having seen it.
Good catch over on Storm2k of unbelievably irresponsible reporting by TWC:
http://www.storm2k.org/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=2647371#p2647371
Good God, the situation is bad enough without insinuating a town was suddenly inundated by 50+ feet(!) of water OVER the worst flood they’d ever had. Can you imagine the panic such “information” could cause?
Note the poster’s very “pointed” comments.
That said, weather.gov / NOAA / USGS needs to be more “on the ball” too, and show on the page people would most likely go straight to that the gauge is broken / faulty.* Right now, it still erroneously shows “Armageddon”.
https://water.weather.gov/ahps2/hydrograph.php?wfo=sju&gage=comp4
Someone should screen capture this craziness & repost it as erroneous. I could label (add big text to) the image, but do not have a good way to repost it.
*I have seen weather.gov do this in cases around here, so why not for Puerto Rico?