WE ALL MAY NEED TO TAKE A STEP BACK.. Everyone. Weather forecasters.. News media folks.. Bloggers and Tweets and even the social justice warriors among us. The whole lot.
While Fox News’ Shepard Smith was covering Hurricane Matthew, he went far.. Very far. He not only warned that people in the affected area would die, but that their children would die as well. And then said when he interviews people who stay, he will ask them if they want FOX to cover their funerals.
Last night a mini-controversy erupted when the Drudge Report’s Matt Drudge tweeted a demand to know where the 165winds were.. Drudge suggested that the predictions of doom, gloom, and death, were all being done to further the cause of climate change carbon taxes.. POP SCI and other sites hit back, saying not to trust Drudge for weather info…
I suppose you can trust the National Hurricane Center (which normally flubs the number of named storms predictions yearly) .. Or maybe we can trust NOAA… The Weather Channel. Take your pick..
But in reality, I have noticed one thing lately about weather forecasting: It is getting over the top. In an aim to be sexy and seductive, weather prognosticators have abandoned the calm method of prediction in favor or a dire warning of death constantly..
Each snowstorm will kill you. Every cold wave will freeze you. Every rain storm will flood you. And now every hurricane will kill your children.
This is not an argument that people in the affected storm path should stay. Look at Katrina. Ivan. Sandy. Don’t stay. If the storm is going to hit you, don’t stay. If you were be potentially slapped with 165 mile per hour winds, get out.
But the last thing we need are weather forecasters telling us all the ways we can die and perish from the planet.
Calm.
Cool.
Collective.
we lost that ability.
Instead we are left with weather forecasters acting more like the priest from POLTERGEIST warning a family of death.