It’s morning in Minnesota, and we’ve had are first winter storm this year. We’ve probably received about 8” of snow so far, and a few more inches are on the way. Although it is not too cold (about 28F) it is windy, and the visibility sucks—most of the schools in the Twin Cities Metro are closed to protect the wee ones.
However, that’s not what my rant is about. When I was watching the local news this morning to find out about school closings, you’d think Armageddon was upon us. They had reporters outside getting snowed on, traffic cameras pointed to a few spin-outs, and constant chatter about the snow storm. (I had to laugh when a reporter tried to demonstrate how much it had snowed already this morning. She had the camera pan down, she stomped her foot in the snow and said, “See? It goes all the way to the top of my foot.” (You could still see the top of her foot.)
TV News: Here’s a clue:
IT’S [SIZE=4]MINNESOTA. IT **SNOWS ** HERE. IT’S NOT THAT FUCKING NEWSWORTHY.[/SIZE] Just run the school closings, give us the drive-times, and get on with the news. Oh, wait; it is the local news, which isn’t really news, so that might explain a thing or two.
Anyway, there should be a special place in hell for the marketing geniuses that have made “severe weather” so prominent in the news over the last few years. As soon as summer comes, we’ll be treated to nonstop Doppler coverage of thunderstorms. Will it ever end?
That feels better—I’ll soothe myself by going home and making a snowman with the kids, before the snow all melts by the end of the week.
Hey, a few years ago they set off the “get to shelter” air-raid sirens because it was going to be real windy.
To be fair, it’s really heavy, wet snow, so snow tires just fill up with packed snow and traction sucks. A guy in the cube next to me just got a call from his wife saying there was a snowplow parked in front of their house that was stuck… the drive was shoveling salt/sand from the back under his tires to try and get some traction.
Yeah, I hear ya. You wouldn’t think the news would make such a big deal out of something that’s a regular occurrence 'round these here parts. On the other hand, I guess there’s something to be said for living in a city where the biggest news is that it snowed again. It’s kind of nice to imagine this:
News director: “So what’s happening in the city today? Murders? Arson? Bombings? What’s going on?”
Reporter: “Well… it’s snowing… again. It is kind of heavy…”
ND: “… That’s it? Snow? Ok. Run with it. Try to make it sound sensational, though.”
I was hoping for more! A measly 8"?? What’s this??
When’s the last time that Minnesotan’s have had a 15" snowstorm, followed by
-20 temperatures? Where’s the jumper cables? The long underwear? Little kids stuffed into so many layers that if they fall, they need help to stand back up?
Where’s a good, deep snowstorm to force me to call into work, and spend the day on the couch with my computer, hot chocolate and a good book, watching the fire in the fireplace?
Instead I get 8" of warm soggy snow, a power outage that started at 4:00 this morning, so there’s no heat, no internet, no book, no hot chocolate. This quadruple tragedy forces me to go to work!!! Oh, the humanity!!
On the plus side, my work is closed today, so I get a snowday! The building lost power and water. It’s such a wet heavy snow, that a lot of lines are down.
Saint Paul schools are open, so my son is away, my wife’s work is open, so it’s me and the dog.
I got halfway to work before I decided to call work and see if they were open. The roads were awfully shitty, and I even saw a MnDOT plow in the ditch. If the snow would have happened yesterday, I’d be working today, but I think the newsworthy part of it was that it was coming down so hard that the plows were having a tought time keeping up.
But I agree. It’s Minnesota. It’s high school tournament time. It snows here.
I think Lileks’ Bleat was written on Sunday afternoon. The snow didn’t start until about 4am on Monday. Hopefully, Lileks will give the storm all the credit it deserves (about 1 column inch) in the upcoming Bleat.
(Thanks for the link, though. I need to read Lileks more regularly–he and I grew up blocks from each other (although he is about 10 years older than me), and I can relate to a lot of his writings.)
Breathless over-dramatization of the weather is a television thing, not an actual reflection of the attitudes of the populace. Most people up here do not think a storm like this is any big deal and we all agree that the local news media goes overboard in trying to make every storm sound like the apocalypse. Just wait until the summer when they start preemting network programming to provide wall-to-wall coverage of thunderstorms and tornado watches. My favorite part is when they start taking calls from viewers telling them what the weather’s like at their house (“I saw some lightning and some hail, Frank. I’m going into the cellar now”).
I also love when they start giving advice to people who couldn’t possibly be watching (“If you’re in your car do NOT get out. If you’re out in the open, try to find shelter or get in a ditch”).
You think the Twin Cities local news is bad? You should try watching the Sioux Falls news! Which is what I’m forced to watch if I want to know what the weather is going to do on my side of the state, because to the metro news, we don’t fucking exist over here. I swear to Christ, we can be blowing away in a tornado, and WCCO doesn’t give a rat’s ass enough to put a scrawl along the bottom.
Also: out here in the boonies, it’s us town kids who have to show up for work. Those who live outside of town (even if it’s only two miles, as with one of my co-workers) get to stay home.
I gotta say, it’s days like today that make me really glad I get to take the light rail to work every day. (they said the trains were running 10-15 minutes behind schedule, but since the trains run every 7-8 minutes anyway, what difference does it make?).
Of course, when I got to work this morning, the phones and network were both non-functional. Phones were back up by 9:15, most network access by 9:45. Except email, which I didn’t get back till about 2:30 this afternoon.
This thread is making me laugh my ass off. Here I am in Michigan where yesterday, it was in the mid sixties with a tornado watch and today, it’s 30 degrees with 30 mph winds and likely to snow.
Thanks for the tv weather people laughs guys, I needed it this morn.
Obviously none of you have ever been to Toronto during the winter. While our local news programs actually aren’t that bad and only call for severe weather warnings when we’re likely to expect actual severe weather, Torononians, and indeed most southern Ontarians, have an astounding capacity to completely forget what snow is if given half the chance (that is, a week without any). At no time is this more evident then when a previously extended clear weather period turns inclement. This is when bloody well near every single human being with four wheels under his or her arse completely forgets how to drive. It doesn’t take much in the way of snow, either – two or three flakes swirling round the divider is enough to have everyone slamming on their brakes and driving as if the next ten mile stretch is covered in black ice and their tires are bald. If you get up close enough to one of these cars, you can actually see the look of naked terror in the eyes of the driver.
It usually takes a day or two of this for people to regain their composure and remember what snow is all about, but for that first day or two it’s like watching a wolf pup scamper out on to a frozen lake and watching it splay its legs as it slides and spins, completely unsure of what the hell is going on and having no idea what to do about it.
I think all the news consisted of last night was snow in the twin cities, twisters in southern Illinois, and fires in Texas.
While the snow didn’t effect my commute much (turned 10 minutes into 30) others in my office had some sucky commutes. Typical drive time of 55 minutes turned into 2 hours and 40 minutes.
I guess if people didn’t have to drive through the stuff it wouldn’t make much news at all.