Hurricane Florence has disrupted our trip to the northeast. This is the third time in the last two years that travel plans to the northeast have been cancelled because of weather. More accurately, plans were cancelled because of the forecast.
Weather forecasting has always had substantial variation. It is essentially impossible to perfectly predict so complex a system as weather, one that is dependent on local factors for local results. Added to this inherent inaccuracy is a kind of weather sensationalism.
Weather used to be boring. The Weather Man was always the chump on the news team. He was a kind of clown, reciting vague information with a smile and a patter delivery. Youtube has some great videos of mistakes and weather fails from this kind of weather reporting.
All this changed in 1982, when The Weather Channel was born. At first TWC was just an infographic with a voiceover for local and national weather. On-air meteorologists were added, then weather specials. By this time the local weather was reduced to 'weather on the 8s', while the rest of the air time was filled with storm warnings and on-site reports from tornado and hurricane sites.
While this was happening, America came to expect warnings of any possible problem, and began suing any information provider that failed to give such warning. Weather forecasts got caught up in the wave of transfer of responsibility for safety from the individual to corporations and finally society, through government.
The result has been a marked change in weather forecasting. A typical summer forecast in my youth was 'Mostly sunny and hot, high 92, with a chance for a stray afternoon thundershower'. That day is now described as 'Partly cloudy, hot and humid. High 92 with heat index a dangerous 98. 20% chance of thunderstorms.' The same day has gone from being a pleasant summer day where we all knew a cook-out or swim might get interrupted by a thunderstorm, to a dangerous, cloudy day with thunderstorms looming.
Concomitantly, weather reporting must now attract viewers. What was once a news service is now an independent cable channel, and what sells, what gets eyeballs and clicks and likes, is sensationalism. Weather is a phenomenon! We have adjective creep to the point that adjectives mean nothing. Every storm is dangerous, every rain might cause flash flooding, there seems to always be a chance for a tornado somewhere, and we get breathless reportage of hook echoes on doppler and reports from completely unqualified strangers in cars of funnel clouds. Somehow the same people who were once dismissed when reporting UFOs are now 'weather scouts' when reporting funnel clouds.
The net result is that every storm gets warnings in the most lurid terms, from reporters rather than meteorologists, who use leading tones and insinuations to make everything sound like impending doom. Every storm, every single low pressure system, must be 'watched very carefully'. There are hourly updates! How exciting can weather possibly be? Hourly updates- Heavens! I might miss something! There is as well, of course, the underlying need to 'confirm' global climate change by linking every storm, every single tornadic cell, to global warming, and making clear that 'we are seeing lots more of these, aren't we?'
In the case of hurricane Florence, it was reported as a category 4, a very dangerous, life-threatening storm. It had 83 foot waves! Measured by satellite from outer space (How do you measure waves from outer space through clouds? Why is anyone wasting millions of dollars of technology on this?)! It was bigger than North and South Carolina put together! Up to 40 inches of rain, 13 foot storm surges, millions to evacuate, property damage up to 60 billion dollars. Trains, football games and airplanes all cancelled. Rain and tropical force winds all the way into Appalachia. It was reported in ominous tones that only two category 4 storms had EVER hit North Carolina. This was The Big One, the Storm of the Century, The Storm of a Lifetime. Every one of those lines is taken from a report in a major news outlet in the last five days.
Reality was rather different.....
North Carolina has still been hit by only two category 4 storms. Florence came ashore as a category 1. The storm surge was....9 feet. Over about 50 miles of shore, not the 200 forecast. Winds dropped almost immediately to 50-70 mph. I've lived through those, in my home, twice. There were no 83 foot waves. No sharks fell out of the sky, homes and beaches were not washed away. A couple hundred thousand are without power, not the millions warned of. Of course there is damage, and of course there will be disruptions, but this was not The Big One, or The Storm of the Century.
Despite this, we got the absolutely predictable reporting- men standing in flapping clothes shouting into microphones (including one obviously faked report), video of trees down and water in the streets, a couple of boats in yards, some flooded basements.
It was a hurricane. You expected something different? This is news, let alone a calamity? I'm not trivializing a hurricane, especially for those without power, flooded, with relatives either in hospitals or morgues. It's just that this was not a Calamity. No capital letters, insinuating and leading tones or dark warnings were necessary. And most of all, the alarmism was harmful to the credibility of weather reports and inflammatory.
In the quest to predict every possible bad thing and the need to get attention, TWC and other outlets have paradoxically made their forecasts less useful, not more. No one can tell any more when something is really dangerous as opposed to just hype and paranoia. We cancelled our trip for what is turning out to be a nuisance (at least where we were to be traveling) rather than Armageddon.
I wish TWC would go back to the facts. If our 'culture' wants weather sensationalism, we can watch Sharknado, or The Day After Tomorrow. Next time, we keep our plans, and I won't pay any more attention to weather reports than I do to America's Got Talent.
Ted
Weather forecasting has always had substantial variation. It is essentially impossible to perfectly predict so complex a system as weather, one that is dependent on local factors for local results. Added to this inherent inaccuracy is a kind of weather sensationalism.
Weather used to be boring. The Weather Man was always the chump on the news team. He was a kind of clown, reciting vague information with a smile and a patter delivery. Youtube has some great videos of mistakes and weather fails from this kind of weather reporting.
All this changed in 1982, when The Weather Channel was born. At first TWC was just an infographic with a voiceover for local and national weather. On-air meteorologists were added, then weather specials. By this time the local weather was reduced to 'weather on the 8s', while the rest of the air time was filled with storm warnings and on-site reports from tornado and hurricane sites.
While this was happening, America came to expect warnings of any possible problem, and began suing any information provider that failed to give such warning. Weather forecasts got caught up in the wave of transfer of responsibility for safety from the individual to corporations and finally society, through government.
The result has been a marked change in weather forecasting. A typical summer forecast in my youth was 'Mostly sunny and hot, high 92, with a chance for a stray afternoon thundershower'. That day is now described as 'Partly cloudy, hot and humid. High 92 with heat index a dangerous 98. 20% chance of thunderstorms.' The same day has gone from being a pleasant summer day where we all knew a cook-out or swim might get interrupted by a thunderstorm, to a dangerous, cloudy day with thunderstorms looming.
Concomitantly, weather reporting must now attract viewers. What was once a news service is now an independent cable channel, and what sells, what gets eyeballs and clicks and likes, is sensationalism. Weather is a phenomenon! We have adjective creep to the point that adjectives mean nothing. Every storm is dangerous, every rain might cause flash flooding, there seems to always be a chance for a tornado somewhere, and we get breathless reportage of hook echoes on doppler and reports from completely unqualified strangers in cars of funnel clouds. Somehow the same people who were once dismissed when reporting UFOs are now 'weather scouts' when reporting funnel clouds.
The net result is that every storm gets warnings in the most lurid terms, from reporters rather than meteorologists, who use leading tones and insinuations to make everything sound like impending doom. Every storm, every single low pressure system, must be 'watched very carefully'. There are hourly updates! How exciting can weather possibly be? Hourly updates- Heavens! I might miss something! There is as well, of course, the underlying need to 'confirm' global climate change by linking every storm, every single tornadic cell, to global warming, and making clear that 'we are seeing lots more of these, aren't we?'
In the case of hurricane Florence, it was reported as a category 4, a very dangerous, life-threatening storm. It had 83 foot waves! Measured by satellite from outer space (How do you measure waves from outer space through clouds? Why is anyone wasting millions of dollars of technology on this?)! It was bigger than North and South Carolina put together! Up to 40 inches of rain, 13 foot storm surges, millions to evacuate, property damage up to 60 billion dollars. Trains, football games and airplanes all cancelled. Rain and tropical force winds all the way into Appalachia. It was reported in ominous tones that only two category 4 storms had EVER hit North Carolina. This was The Big One, the Storm of the Century, The Storm of a Lifetime. Every one of those lines is taken from a report in a major news outlet in the last five days.
Reality was rather different.....
North Carolina has still been hit by only two category 4 storms. Florence came ashore as a category 1. The storm surge was....9 feet. Over about 50 miles of shore, not the 200 forecast. Winds dropped almost immediately to 50-70 mph. I've lived through those, in my home, twice. There were no 83 foot waves. No sharks fell out of the sky, homes and beaches were not washed away. A couple hundred thousand are without power, not the millions warned of. Of course there is damage, and of course there will be disruptions, but this was not The Big One, or The Storm of the Century.
Despite this, we got the absolutely predictable reporting- men standing in flapping clothes shouting into microphones (including one obviously faked report), video of trees down and water in the streets, a couple of boats in yards, some flooded basements.
It was a hurricane. You expected something different? This is news, let alone a calamity? I'm not trivializing a hurricane, especially for those without power, flooded, with relatives either in hospitals or morgues. It's just that this was not a Calamity. No capital letters, insinuating and leading tones or dark warnings were necessary. And most of all, the alarmism was harmful to the credibility of weather reports and inflammatory.
In the quest to predict every possible bad thing and the need to get attention, TWC and other outlets have paradoxically made their forecasts less useful, not more. No one can tell any more when something is really dangerous as opposed to just hype and paranoia. We cancelled our trip for what is turning out to be a nuisance (at least where we were to be traveling) rather than Armageddon.
I wish TWC would go back to the facts. If our 'culture' wants weather sensationalism, we can watch Sharknado, or The Day After Tomorrow. Next time, we keep our plans, and I won't pay any more attention to weather reports than I do to America's Got Talent.
Ted
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