February 9, 2014
Greetings from beyond the bank,
This week we experienced a winter event. It’s a generic term I arbitrarily inserted to
add marginal importance to an otherwise ordinary event where a combination of
temperature and moisture produce frozen precipitation. Well,
it snowed.
I am not sure when the media started naming snowstorms, but
in doing so merely added an additional annoyance to an already inconvenient
season. Weather is big business. The media understands that hyping an
impending storm will increase viewership and impressions and that helps sell
advertising.
So someone had the idea of labelling snowstorms to give
celebrity meteorologists something to say while they were scaring people into
staying tuned for the next weather update.
‘Snowmageddon’ wasn’t good enough, now the storms must have proper
names.
This week we were visited by ‘Linus’, an unfortunate name
that conjures an image of a sensitive, thoughtful, considerate person who
relies on the comfort of a tattered blanket to feel secure. Which hardly applied here.
We are no strangers to snowstorms here in Michigan. I suppose we want to know that bad weather is
coming, but don’t we have enough drama without making it a TV event?
When snow piles up it wreaks havoc. Schools close, commerce
interrupted, mail is cancelled. Travel
plans are thrashed. Traffic snarls, people are stranded, or worse, collide. This is a place where some people have to get
on the roof to shovel off the snow or risk being crushed by it.
One of the official pastimes in our state is ‘Waiting for
the Plow’. This is a love-hate activity,
depending whether the snowplow clears the road to allow you to get to the
grocery store or banks up a five foot high wall of compacted snow at the end of
your just- shoveled driveway.
Because we are from Michigan, snow is not so much a reason
to stay home but a challenge to get on the road. Well prepared motorists carry a shovel, salt,
chains, emergency flares, first aid kit, food and water in case of being
stranded. My level of preparedness
includes a Frisbee in the trunk, which can actually be used for moving small
quantities of snow. It is also a hopeful
reminder of another season.
Driving in snow requires a blend of optimism, courage, and
patience. The last element comes into
play when you are waiting for the tow truck to pull you out of wherever you are
stuck.
And then there is the question of what to wear. Typically, the best advice is to dress like
you did when you were 10 and your mom wouldn’t let you go out unless you had
three layers under your snowsuit. Fashion
tends to give way to function in winter.
It’s not that we want to look like arctic explorers; comfort, sometimes
survival, is often a higher priority than appearance.
But in all of this, someone is trying to sell air time on
the local news. And so we put up with
the hype, and hope the motivation is to inform us and not just manipulate
us. But I am not naive. My guess is that we are only one step away
from branding storms. Don’t be surprised
when the day comes that the Weather Channel introduces weather like ‘The
Progressive Insurance Blizzard’ or ‘McDonald’s
Flurries’ or ‘Mucinex Minor Accumulation’.
I don’t begrudge the weather-hawkers trying to make a
living, I can just shut them off if I don’t want to hear it. It’s weather; it will happen again
tomorrow. To paraphrase Longfellow, the
best thing one can do when it snows, is to let it snow.
Now, where is that Frisbee?
Hope this finds you making snow angels,
David
Copyright © 2015 David Smith
No comments:
Post a Comment