Last night while we were watching Criminal Minds and CSI (one of the few nights when we watch anything on the “Big Four”) the local CBS affiliate was doing the “Scary! Big Significant Scary Weather Event! Scary! Panic Time!” thing. So this morning it occurred to me that you can tell what the weather is going to be not by what they say but by how often they say it. If they completely preempt the regular shows for non-stop weather coverage there will pretty definitely be some precipitation and possibly some thunder/lightening and wind. If they only break in occasionally for an update there’s not much more than a 50 percent chance of anything happening – maybe a good rain but nothing really unusual. If they only run warnings at the bottom of the screen and that annoying little weather map in the corner that’s too small to see the weather on but big enough to block out the opening credits or English subtitles you’re trying to read, there’s a tiny, miniscule, extremely small chance that there will be a few teensy drops of rain.
Last night they were just breaking in occasionally and talking about 80 MPH winds and golf ball size hail. I heard just a little thunder and apparently it rained a little bit. You can’t really blame them though. If they’re not trying to stir up panic some people won’t pay attention and will later cry, “Why didn’t they warn us?!” if something really does happen.
May 31st, 2012 - 9:02 pm
Down here, we were told that Tuesday would be basically a warmup for Wednesday, stormwise. Tuesday turned out to be horrendous, and Wednesday was a total bust. Where’s Chicken Little when you need him.
June 1st, 2012 - 2:08 am
I’m very disappointed in the recent weather reporting. I was told there would be an all out storm, with hail, lightning, rain, tornadoes, and possibly burning bushes starting at 10:00 PM in the Tulsa area. I had ridden my KLR650 to work in hopes of getting it cleaned in the rainstorm, but it stayed perfectly dry until about 1:00 am, by which time I had already gone home. I’m afraid I’m going to have to suffer the indignity of taking it to a car wash and (gasp) wash it myself.
June 1st, 2012 - 8:45 am
What gets me is that they are always saying stuff like “Hail the size of baby’s heads!” or “Hail the size of large grapefruits!”
I have never seen hail even as large in diameter as a dime. I know, I should count myself lucky, because I suppose baby-head-sized hail could punch a hole through a roof, but….I wonder when the Boy Who Cried Wolf effect starts to kick in and people start disregarding valid warnings because too many times we’ve been told to expect DOOM and that does not happen.
June 1st, 2012 - 10:49 am
I have seen dime and nickel size hail a number of times and even quarter size hail once.
June 1st, 2012 - 8:27 pm
The storm that killed my roof in 2010 spewed over my premises several dozen balls of ice of approximately the same diameter as baseballs, along with several hundred smaller ones.
It’s stuff like this that makes me shelve the occasional desire for a skylight in the living room.