[Speed Gibson,
Thursday August 24, 2006 at 10:08pm]
Weather Weenies gone Wild - Again
It's been a long hot summer. The weather weenies on our local TV stations have forecasted 22 of the last 3 rain storms to pass through the area. Anything that might produce rain showed up as a crawl when it got within 300 miles of the Twin Cities.
So now comes a nice, summer thunderstorm. Yes, it was more violent near Faribault, well out of range of the Shoreview antenna farm, but nothing at all threatening here. It rained, with some thunder and lightning. They claimed one inch hail in Fridley, two miles east of our house. We saw nothing, just a nice rain.
But all that expensive equipment (including a famous toupee) was going to be put to use, damn it. Tornado season is just about over. This could be their last chance. A crawl won't do. Network programming must cease as they repeat the same three minutes of information twenty times to fill an entire hour. They will control the horizontal. They will control the vertical. And if we had a lick of sense, we should be cowering in our basements just in case like they recommend.
I know this because when we returned from a meeting, we found all this instead of Big Brother on the DVR. But I'm guessing that channels 5 and 11 did pretty much the same.
Of course, when the ratings giant CSI comes on, well, OK, I guess the threat's over - oh but come back at 10 pm and we'll repeat it a few more times.
I switched to the cable weather channel. It said it was raining. Absolutely correct.
We'll live. We'll DVR the rebroadcast of Big Brother at 12:50 am. That's not the point.
The point is, as I've said before, this nonsense is going to eventually kill people, not save them. By constantly crying wolf, we have learned to ignore this self-serving hyperbole.
Remember last summer's storm that took out tens of thousands of trees, and had power out nearly a week in some areas? There was one fatality, a freak accident of a falling tree limb hitting a man after the storm had largely passed.
Dave Dahl, on Joe Soucheray's show at 4:30 pm didn't see it coming just a few minutes later. That's not his fault really. These more violent storms often develop quickly as did this one. All that fancy radar was useless that night. The damage was done before they could even get on the air, and the power was out for many to even view it by then.
But even if they could have seen it coming, who would have believed them to the point of changing their plans and seeking shelter?
Forgive me if I sound like Bill O'Reilly or Tim Pawlenty. I'm about at the point where I honestly think the Legislature or the FCC needs to look into this. This time, I am as mad as hell.
So now comes a nice, summer thunderstorm. Yes, it was more violent near Faribault, well out of range of the Shoreview antenna farm, but nothing at all threatening here. It rained, with some thunder and lightning. They claimed one inch hail in Fridley, two miles east of our house. We saw nothing, just a nice rain.
But all that expensive equipment (including a famous toupee) was going to be put to use, damn it. Tornado season is just about over. This could be their last chance. A crawl won't do. Network programming must cease as they repeat the same three minutes of information twenty times to fill an entire hour. They will control the horizontal. They will control the vertical. And if we had a lick of sense, we should be cowering in our basements just in case like they recommend.
I know this because when we returned from a meeting, we found all this instead of Big Brother on the DVR. But I'm guessing that channels 5 and 11 did pretty much the same.
Of course, when the ratings giant CSI comes on, well, OK, I guess the threat's over - oh but come back at 10 pm and we'll repeat it a few more times.
I switched to the cable weather channel. It said it was raining. Absolutely correct.
We'll live. We'll DVR the rebroadcast of Big Brother at 12:50 am. That's not the point.
The point is, as I've said before, this nonsense is going to eventually kill people, not save them. By constantly crying wolf, we have learned to ignore this self-serving hyperbole.
Remember last summer's storm that took out tens of thousands of trees, and had power out nearly a week in some areas? There was one fatality, a freak accident of a falling tree limb hitting a man after the storm had largely passed.
Dave Dahl, on Joe Soucheray's show at 4:30 pm didn't see it coming just a few minutes later. That's not his fault really. These more violent storms often develop quickly as did this one. All that fancy radar was useless that night. The damage was done before they could even get on the air, and the power was out for many to even view it by then.
But even if they could have seen it coming, who would have believed them to the point of changing their plans and seeking shelter?
Forgive me if I sound like Bill O'Reilly or Tim Pawlenty. I'm about at the point where I honestly think the Legislature or the FCC needs to look into this. This time, I am as mad as hell.