Snow Hype Overkill

What's that you say? A large-ish snow storm...In February?! In the NORTHEAST?!

Apparently, a blizzard is now "deadly"!

A "MONSTER" of mythical proportions!"Snowpocalypse"? "SNOMG"? Are you f-ing serious?!

Everyone Has Officially Gone Batshit at the Weather Channel

Guys. I know most of us hate our lives and need to find a diversion to quell the  misery in Upstate New York, but seriously? How many times in the past decade has there been a snowfall of over 12" in a two-day period? I don't care if it was a multi-state storm, just think about it: We get at least this much snow once each winter, typically multiple times. It's not the end of the world. We are not going to die in a cold, wintry snow-nado/nami. I'm genuinely sorry to tell you this, but life will go on. Spring will soon come (according to the groundhog), and then there will be furious FLOODING. Summer may bring gargantuan T-STORMS. Fall will bring a flurry of leaves, and possibly MORE flooding. Then it will all start over again.

So for now, let's just enjoy the fact that most of us had a snow day from work and/or school today. You can take a walk outside at night and there isn't a soul around. In addition, the snow actually looks kind of...well, pretty, sparkling in the street lights. As far as the weather goes, we are all going to be just fine.

Weather-MANIA!

Guys, seriously...How long has it been snowing, raining, windy, etc. over the course of history? Pretty much every day, right? Well then, why does it seem that suddenly people are OBSESSED with the weather in an unhealthy way? Take this current snowstorm, for example. Everywhere I go, the ONLY thing people talk about is The Snow; how much we're going to get, how much we've already got, whether or not it will be the last storm of the season, snow days, etc.
I understand that weather can be exciting, but consider the weather channels and news. It almost seems like a whole SWAT team of weather temps have been hired, just to create Power Point presentations about the path of the storm, the severity, etc. Check out this link to see what I mean:

Weather Insanity.


First you have the normal, text report that predicts what the next 24 or 48 hours will bring in terms of weather. But it seems totally unnecessary to have a huge map with glaring yellow font (all in capital letters, naturally!) Highlighting just a few words in summary of what the nasty ol' Mother Nature is going to bring. Because, LAWD knows that we don't have time to read like, a FOUR SENTENCE weather report! We need to get that shit done in four WORDS! "TRAVEL IMPACT BEGINS; SNOW MOVES IN!" In addition, apparently it's super imperative that we also use bold in the text report, because certain words are just so important!
 
Major snowstorm...peak intensity...travel impacts will be major...road travel will become dangerous, if not locally IMPOSSIBLE!

We craft weather reports as if they were newscasts of terrorist attacks.

I can just see a group of production people huddled around a table in the News Channel 13 studio. The conversation probably goes something like this:

Supervisor: "Alright, guys, what have we got set to air for this monster storm today?"

Underling: "Well, I wrote up a couple of paragraphs describing the kind of precipitation we're getting, the amount anticipated, and the impacts it will likely have on everyday life for the next day or two. Also, I included the standard weather map with swirly colorful patterns to indicate where precipitation will be the heaviest."

Supervisor: "STANDARD WEATHER MAP?! You've got to be fucking kidding me. Guys, I want MAGIC, here! I want interactive maps, where you can click online for storm development by the HOUR! I need important words in bold! I HAVE to have 18 point font in piss yellow with slogan-esque DEVASTATION HIGHLIGHTS! This very well could be the last weather incident we witness for the rest of our LIVES!"

Underling: "...Yes, sir. Sorry, sir...I will make the necessary changes."

*Supervisor turns on his heels, takes a sip of his Starbucks Venti Espresso-ccino*(mutters while exiting scene): "Jesus, is anyone else even EXCITED about the weather around here?"