Weather panic: What's in a name?
Gales Gone Wild
By TIMOTHY EGAN
Things started to go wrong with the weather when the Weather Channel decided on its own last year to give every winter storm a proper name. Snow, no matter if it was simply falling on cedars, and frost, even if it was historically known as Jack, nipping at your nose, were gone. Thereafter came Winter Storm Brutus, Winter Storm Nemo, Winter Storm Saturn — some serious meteorological thugs.
No wonder we’re scared. More than news, sports or even adorable kitty videos, weather is by some measures now the most-accessed type of information on the Internet. As weather the generic has been overtaken by weather.com, the commercial brand that crosses all media platforms, barely a week passes without a reason to hide under your bed, remote in one hand, freeze-dried food in the other.
The scourge of 24-hour news, in which stuff that isn’t important gets its own countdown clock, is now doing to the weather what it did to public affairs and the stock market. It’s making us all a little jumpy and anxious, with a twisted view of the normal rhythms of the seasons.
Consider “Snowquester,” the storm that was supposed to shut down Washington, D.C., last month. Predictions were calling for up to a foot of snow, which would leave the world’s most powerful democracy at a standstill. The run on grocery stores was stunning: a can of lentil soup, for a few hours, was worth more than bad advice from Newt Gingrich. The Weather Channel’s flood stud, Jim Cantore, was dispatched to the capital for live updates, waiting, waiting, waiting.
(More here.)
By TIMOTHY EGAN
Things started to go wrong with the weather when the Weather Channel decided on its own last year to give every winter storm a proper name. Snow, no matter if it was simply falling on cedars, and frost, even if it was historically known as Jack, nipping at your nose, were gone. Thereafter came Winter Storm Brutus, Winter Storm Nemo, Winter Storm Saturn — some serious meteorological thugs.
No wonder we’re scared. More than news, sports or even adorable kitty videos, weather is by some measures now the most-accessed type of information on the Internet. As weather the generic has been overtaken by weather.com, the commercial brand that crosses all media platforms, barely a week passes without a reason to hide under your bed, remote in one hand, freeze-dried food in the other.
The scourge of 24-hour news, in which stuff that isn’t important gets its own countdown clock, is now doing to the weather what it did to public affairs and the stock market. It’s making us all a little jumpy and anxious, with a twisted view of the normal rhythms of the seasons.
Consider “Snowquester,” the storm that was supposed to shut down Washington, D.C., last month. Predictions were calling for up to a foot of snow, which would leave the world’s most powerful democracy at a standstill. The run on grocery stores was stunning: a can of lentil soup, for a few hours, was worth more than bad advice from Newt Gingrich. The Weather Channel’s flood stud, Jim Cantore, was dispatched to the capital for live updates, waiting, waiting, waiting.
(More here.)
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