No shit, it's snowing? I didn't know that.

[twickster]

As y'all may have heard, we had some serious snow here on the East coast yesterday.

The local news kept us apprised of that fact nonstop from about 5 AM until 6:30 (when they stopped for the national news, which also mentioned it), then did another hour from 7 to 8 PM in case there was someone in the immediate area who hadn't heard.

This struck me as excessive. We knew it was snowing. We knew it was bad. We appreciated the news that the Schuylkill (major local highway) was closed, but didn't need to see pictures of no-one-driving-on-the-Schuylkill. We also didn't need you reading from the station's Facebook page, or to see not very good digital pictures of dogs next to snowbanks sent in by viewers, or hear the recipe for a soy-milk-and-chai beverage named for a regular customer at the only coffee place open in Center City, even if said regular customer was present and available to taste it and pronounce it as exactly the same as every other time she had had it.

People were home and bored -- wouldn't it have been more of a public service to put on your regular programming?

How much news do you need during bad weather?

[norinew]

As Andy Rooney once said "I want better information from my weatherman than I can get from looking out the window".

[Annie-Xmas]

How much do you need to know? It's snowing heavily. Stay inside.

Cute pictures of snowmen, children and dogs in the snow get tiresome.

[Skammer]

I want a crawl along the bottom that tells me things I need to know, like:

- major road closures
- shelter information if there is a power outage
- school closings, I guess, although it should be obvious

I don't need hours of reports standing outside showing me how high the drifts are.

[carnivorousplant]

I didn't know the five inches was coming to Arkansas this time.

[Czarcasm]

I didn't know the five inches was coming to Arkansas this time."The five inches"
Cute nickname there.

[Sigmagirl]

I'm in Cleveland (http://www.forbes.com/2010/02/05/weather-snow-storm-lifestyle-travel-winter-snowfall_slide_11.html). No snow here.

[FairyChatMom]

The 24-hour blathering got old really fast. Give me the occasional road updates and show me the radar once in a while as things move. Otherwise, talk about something else.

And I really don't need to see other peoples' yards. They look just like mine - white, with bumps of things under the white. Unless you snapped a pic of a family of Yeti performing their snow ritual in your yard, it's not newsworthy.

[Czarcasm]

In in Portland, Oregon, where predictions of snowfall cause school shutdowns and massive traffic jams, and the five local stations compete to see who can come up with the best newstheme involving the word "-Storm (insert year here)".

[carnivorousplant]

"The five inches"
Cute nickname there.

An unusually large amount for this area. :)

[Eureka]

I grew up in Minnesota and presently live in Kentucky. This makes me extremely unsympathetic to "Ack! it snowed two inches, must close school for 2 days". Although, in fairness, there is a lack of plows and such, and some of the more rural counties (which I do not live in) have crappy roads and enough hills and hollers to make it difficult for people to get to work/school.

And for reasons unconnected to the weather, we watched our usual Tuesday night TV on Wednesday-so the school closings were out of date as well as geographically useles.

Now, I wouldn't have minded pics of major winter snow. But if it's an inch or two, I can live with the crawl, but nothing more is really needed.

Can't remember the last time I really had a major snowstorm.

[Ferret Herder]

Yesterday, O'Hare beat the record for snowfall accumulation on that particular day of the year since they started keeping track of such things.

The news, happily, was focused on the neato 3.8 earthquake we had here in Illinois, made even more interesting by the fact that it wasn't from a known fault in the area! :D

Sure, there's the usual crawl of what schools are closed and whatever, but hey, earthquake!

[Edward The Head]

I haven't seen the national news in a week now. Though the little ones have been watching the kids channel, but I know at least a few days they skipped it. I think we've had way too much snow news, they can do some extra programing, but not all day and night.

[Anaamika]

I think it's worse when the weather people are all freaking out about the upcoming snowstorm and we (locally) only got 2 inches (though everyone around us got hit. I guess we were protected by mountains). It's like they were coming in their pants about the possibility of snow. Got egg on your face, now, do ya, assholes? I never believe a thing they say.

[Oredigger77]

I don't mind quick updates between shows but I am more looking for how much has already fallen, where it's fallen and how much more is coming. I don't care about bigger updates or on site reporting I just want to know how bad it’s been and how much worse its going to get beyond that I'll find out in the morning when I try to go to work.

[YogSosoth]

I picked an extra half hour. The reason for that is because here in LA, we hardly ever get bad weather so when it happens, it's actually news. I would feel different if I were in, say, Seattle or Minnesota

[MeanOldLady]

In addition to 24-hour news coverage, I would like to have weather updates text messaged to my phone on at least an hourly basis.

[KneadToKnow]

I never believe a thing they say.

When I used to live in Greenville, SC, it was easy to predict the weather: any weather Atlanta got, we got. Outside of hurricanes, but that's a different story.

And yet, somehow, two of the three major networks (this was before Fox affiliates had local news) managed to screw it up reliably.

[The Devil's Grandmother]

I don't have any snow, but the news goes berserk every time we have an earthquake and I'd be perfectly happy if they stopped yammering on about those.

[Regallag_The_Axe]

Not only do I have a window that I can look out of, I have an internet that I can check on. Up here in CT we had close to zero accumulation yesterday, after local weather people estimated anywhere from 4-8 inches to 8-16 inches. And schools closed. When I went to the liquor store, the guy there said that people had called him the day prior, asking of he would be open (He was open because, as he explained, if everyone had to stay home all day without alcohol it would be hell). Of course, we did have snow last night, along with people out this morning who couldn't handle it.

[billfish678]

I didn't know the five inches was coming to Arkansas this time.

Ever since Bill Clinton left the state you guys just keep coming up short ehhh? :)

I for one welcome our new snow overlords. Hell, if its gonna be below freezing in the deep south we might as well enjoy a dusting of snow.

[Runs With Scissors]

In in Portland, Oregon, where predictions of snowfall cause school shutdowns and massive traffic jams, and the five local stations compete to see who can come up with the best newstheme involving the word "-Storm (insert year here)".

I wonder what other cities' equivalent of the "Sylvan Overpass" is?

(That's where reporters always go for snow reports...it's in the hills above downtown and spans a freeway. It's become a joke that reporters go there any time there's a hint of snow.)

When Rick Emerson was on the air a year ago, the snow was called "Stormgasm 2008." The heatwave last August was Hotpocalypse.

BTW, I voted for nonstop coverage. :)

[RealityChuck]

I never understood people's obsession with weather reports. Most of the year, it doesn't matter; in the winter, it's useful to get a forecast, but it's often likely to be wrong.

[bump]

Normally, I think it's pretty much idiotic when the news media gets all crazy about what little bit of ice / snow we get here in Dallas (usu. 1/2" or less).

OTOH... I'm giving them a pass for today though. It's snowed steadily since like 4 am, and we're coming up on 10 inches of snow since then, which is something like 3 above the all-time one day record snowfall.

And it's still steadily snowing....

[BigT]

I'm pretty sure the point is that the snow is considered important information, and they want to make sure everyone sees it. But I definitely prefer the way it's usually done on my favorite station. They have a ticker at the bottom, with a map of the area, and will occasionally run a weather report instead of the local part of the commercial breaks.

[troubledwater]

I wonder what other cities' equivalent of the "Sylvan Overpass" is?

If you are near the I80 corridor anywhere between San Francisco and Reno, it's Blue Canyon. Sometimes Nyack or Truckee, but usually Blue Canyon. It's at about 4500ft (Donner Summit is 7239ft ), on the side that gets all the precip, so it's a great photo-op if you like that kind of thing.

[MsRobyn]

I like to listen to the radio in the morning, because I can do that without disturbing the other members of my household.

This week has been Pledge Week, so I've been getting mindless Pledge Week blather while I'm waiting for closure and road information. I don't like Pledge Week under any circumstances, but this week has just been serious irritation. I think that they should have suspended the mindless on-air blather and moved the campaign online for the duration.

[Lynn Bodoni]

This struck me as excessive. We knew it was snowing. We knew it was bad. We appreciated the news that the Schuylkill (major local highway) was closed, but didn't need to see pictures of no-one-driving-on-the-Schuylkill. We also didn't need you reading from the station's Facebook page, or to see not very good digital pictures of dogs next to snowbanks sent in by viewers, or hear the recipe for a soy-milk-and-chai beverage named for a regular customer at the only coffee place open in Center City, even if said regular customer was present and available to taste it and pronounce it as exactly the same as every other time she had had it. I voted for "I have a window", but the truth is I have a window AND I have a husband who is obsessed with news and weather reports. Part of his obsession with weather is because his employer is the FAA, and he works in the radar department of the DFW airport, which is a major hub. He started by doing repair and maintenance work, and now he's systems engineer, but if there's a hardware problem, then he's likely to be called in. So he actually has a reason to keep an eye on the weather reports. He will regularly share his information with me, too, whether I care about it or not. If I didn't have him, I'd probably want a crawl with breaking news and reports, but that's about it.

I really don't care about the fronts moving in or out of the area. I just want to know if a tornado is likely to hit the house, or if our power is likely to go out, or something like that. I hate those "on the scene" reports where some newscaster is shown out in the bad weather. I don't need to see someone freezing, or getting soaked, to be convinced that it's cold and/or wet outside. I'll take your word for it, really I will. Seeing a newscaster get cold, wet, or blown away with a tornado does not really give any more information than could be reported in a nice, warm, dry, calm studio.

I had to go out yesterday for some medical tests, and it was good to know that we'd had some snowfall and were expecting more, so I could allow extra time to get to the clinic.

I don't think that I've ever seen this much snow in Fort Worth. It's beautiful, but I'm very glad that I don't have to go out today. Fort Worth doesn't have much in the way of snow removal equipment, which is sensible, because we generally only get a dusting of snow overnight, every two or three years, and that dusting is generally melted by noon. I'm somewhat worried that powerlines will fall, or possibly branches will break. We've knocked off the worst of the snow in our trees and power lines, but of course we really can't go into a neighbor's yard and do that, even if we wanted to.

[apollonia]

No. I don't care. I live in Canada. I can look out the window. Luckily, I live in a place with sane news and don't have to deal with 24-hours-of-weather.

[Antigen]

I just need to know about road conditions, really. And what's closed. I also like to know total accumulations of snow, and how windy it is, and whether it's turning to ice. Just so I can guess at whether or not the power will go out. But you can give me that with a news ticker, thanks. I don't need hours of OMG!!! coverage.

[shiftless]

It was crappy enough being trapped in the house for almost a week (I'm on crutches too). Having nothing to watch all day except for weather reports almost drove me insane. Hour after endless hour of reporters standing on forsaken street corners telling us all about their adventures getting there and how everyone else should stay home .... my dislike of the media and their thirst for attention had me screaming at the TV by day three - "go home yourself and shut up!". By day 5 I just gave up on TV news completely except for a few minutes each night.

[kelly5078]

Snow is clearly an important story when if falls where lots of people are paid to keep their jaws flapping. All this snow that's being whined about is standard fare where I grew up (near Cleveland), and a light snowfall where my wife grew up (Syracuse, NY).

[Kiros]

I was flipping out pretty hard Wednesday night because my local stations couldn't figure out how to do a ticker over the HD programming, so they gave me letterboxed SD with a ticker at the bottom telling me "It's snowing out, but not as much as we thought: instead of 9-15 inches you're going to get 1-2. But you should still be careful!" For about 75% of the non-commercial time of each show.