Weather or not
BY C. L. BOTHWELL
The weather has gotten completely out of hand, and I'm up to
here with it. I'm not talking about the real weather: the
wind, the rain, the sleet and all of that wonderful turbulent atmospheric
chaos that makes each day and each season stimulating and delicious. I'm
talking about weather reports.
I think weather people, particularly television weather people, need
to chill out.
There's no doubt weather reports are useful. We can make less
tentative plans for a picnic, carry an umbrella to work, stoke the fire,
open a window or hang sheets out to dry with more confidence when we have
some advance notice of nature's whims.
But weather reporting is becoming less fact and more entertainment
every day, to no one's benefit. Like any big storm, this phenomenon has an
eye, and the eye is centered on the Weather Channel.
Probably the worst juncture came when some whiz-kid invented the
"wind-chill factor." Suddenly there was a pseudo-scientific way to make
the weather look worse than it really was.
A nearly balmy winter day could appear cold, and a frigid spell assume
life-threatening proportions when we were told how cold it felt
instead of how cold it really was. The perversity of the notion is
clear when you consider that you never hear it mentioned in the summer.
"Today we'll get up into the low 90s, with a variable breeze gusting
to 30. So the wind-chill makes it a comfortable 68 degrees."
Then some other hotfoot realized that if it worked for cold, it would
work for warm, too. Voila! The "heat index" was born. Suddenly we
could be reliably informed how hot we felt, instead of simply being told
the air temperature.
What's next? The "long-john scale?"
"The temperature won't get above zero today, but if you're wearing
flannel undies, three sweaters and a ski parka, it will seem like the low
50s."
And then the "bikini factor?"
"Today's gonna be a scorcher, folks, in the high 90s. But if you get
nearly naked, flip on the fan and sip lemonade all afternoon, it'll feel
like April instead of August."
Hurricane reporting has suffered from infotainment as well. It's fine
to be prepared when a storm threatens, but now citizens are urged to worry
from the time a storm cell begins to form off the coast of Africa.
"There's a possible tropical storm south of the Canary Islands that
may strengthen. If it were to become a Force Five hurricane, and follow
the path taken by Hugo, North Carolina could be in for some rough weather
in 10 days.
"Then we could be in jeopardy of confronting hundreds of millions of
dollars in property damage, scores of deaths and torrential flash floods
that will leave thousands homeless. Wind-damaged trees could bring an
extreme forest fire danger in future years and there may be a boom in the
yacht- and roof-repair and lumber industries, with a precipitous decline
in tourism on the Outer Banks.
"The president could be forced to declare parts of three states
disaster areas.' Stay tuned."
Hey, lighten up. You folks begin to sound like a boy crying wolf
and
that's the real danger here. If every day becomes an extreme weather
event, gradually people won't take serious warnings seriously.
Like Dan Rather's breathless reportage that turns every news blurb
into a crisis, this bad weather badinage will create viewers who giggle at
your bouncing eyebrows and ignore a tornado that may blow them to Kansas
or Oz.
Writer C.L. Bothwell III hails from the other Carolina. Duck Soup
is also served up twice every Tuesday on WNCW 88.7FM.
