Monday, January 25, 2016

Blizzard!

The Weather Channel was quite funny this weekend, and we watched it quite a bit as we sat in the hotel room between hockey games.

I don't know when they started naming winter storms (to put them on equal footings with hurricanes in terms of drama), but there were dozens of correspondents reporting breathless about wind gusts to 29 MPH (seriously, holding an anemometer in the middle of a street). I know there were moments of dangerous weather in the storm, but since the Weather Channel is on 24x7, they had too much air time to fill.

Here was a typical report:
"I'm standing here in the middle of winter storm Jonah and let me tell you, this is a dangerous blizzard!"

In the background of most of those shots were people sledding down hills or throwing snowballs at each other.

In a hurricane, no one is standing outside throwing frisbees because the wind is blowing 100+ MPH and you might get hit in the face by something flying down the street.

What is this, the Weather YMCA of storms? Does every storm get a trophy now? Are cold fronts going to get names? What about a line of spring showers?

"Isolated shower Jenny is heading directly over the Wal-Mart where I'm standing, and let me tell you, it's refreshing!"

Site Meter