Even some of us non-farmers have gardens with frost sensitive plants.
I’ve even heard frost warnings in the midwest for frost occurring outside the usual season for it.
I can understand a frost warning. And I certainly can understand a tornado or flash flood warning and all that. What I don’t like is the execution. For people who are half-blind, nearly-deaf, and strapped down to the couch, these loud, obnoxious, screen-hogging announcements that go on forever (except during commercials) are ideal. But for the rest of us, I wish they’d just carve out time from the commercials. It doesn’t even need to be from the sold advertisements. If they’d just substitute the alleged public service announcement in place of their self-promotion spots featuring Andy Anchorman and Susy Sidekick acting like busy newspeople while a talkover begs us to watch them, there’d be no complaint from me.
But the warning we got the other day that prompted this pitting was a wind warning. Yes, a wind warning. Not a tornado. Not a hurricane. Just wind. It effectively knocked out the HD broadcast (these warnings are broadcast in standard def) for twenty minutes out of the half hour. And sometimes when they do that, the system is so jolted that it reboots. And if they can’t do it the way I suggest for such minor crap, then a simple small quiet crawler with a semi-transparent background for just a minute or so should suffice.
Besides, people can tune to the weather channel if they are gardners or farmers and have a vested interest in wind and frost. They also can use the Internet and the window.
The window: lo-tech Weather Channel. What a concept. Maybe they could be marketed that way.
But, swampy, Johnny has looked at clouds from both sides now.
Clouds? looks out the window
You don’t say.
I imagine giant sirens will go off, followed shortly by a womans voice repeating in a sing-song way, “Time for Tubby Bye-Bye! Time for Tubby Bye-Bye!”
Okay, regarding the KILLER FROST FROM HELL, this was in the Bay Area, where people don’t usually try to grow tropical fruits. (Unless you are my dad, who proudly showed me his orange tree last time I saw him. He insisted that if it couldn’t grow there, they wouldn’t have had it at the nursery. Okay, dad. I should write him and ask him how it’s doing.)
Are you sure Poly? Has Johnny looked at clouds from up and down?
Around here even worse than the crawlers is that as soon as a snowflake falls many of the stations go into non-stop “Winter Storm Coverage!!!” We get treated to non-stop weather reports and on-scene updates on how many millimeters of snow have accumulated on the roads in a dozen locations.
And don’t forget features on how to deal with hypothermia. You know, in case the temperature dips below 40.
Same here. We actually got some snow (maybe an inch or two) after several no-show-snow events that had been hyped to death by every channel. But the one that seemed most likely to produce more than a dusting (but didn’t) had reporters on the scene at the salt pile showing how much was available to brine the roadways. Another was at the airport to show that air travelers needn’t worry because Precautions A, B, and C were already in place.
It was outright comical to see all this hype when Flake #1 had yet to fall in the state!
I suppose the TV crowd is all antsy not to let Katrina Snowstorm slip up on them.
I hate clowns!
I live in the Bay Area. There are many frost sensitive plants other than tropical fruits, including (depending on time of year) wine grapes and ornamentals.
Not to say that TV announcements can’t be presented in an overblown manner.
Well, I am a pilot. 
We get that here, too, except they put a much more positive spin on it. Like, “Yay! Snow! Everybody go outside and pretend you’re in Europe!” And then the next day they’ll show footage of happy families making very very small snowmen from the 1/4 inch of snow that actually fell.