Weather

One of the many things I miss about my childhood is the weather, well the lack of interest in it anyway. When I was a child, the weather forecast was usually the last five minutes of the local news. Herb Clarke would tell us it was going to snow the next day and we would just deal with it. No panic buying of milk and bread, running to the gas station to fuel up, my parents just blew it off and we as kids, prepared for a “snow day”. In today’s world, snowstorms are cataclysmic, at least according to the weather folks on TV.

Now, I’m not a “fake news” disciple, I think the folks who constantly scream “fake news” just don’t like the news they hear, so this is their out. I do however have a problem with hyping the news and that’s where I’m heading with this post.

In Pennsylvania, we are expecting anywhere from 3 to 12 inches of snow today, that’s a pretty big window but that’s how the many different weather agencies and news stations have it for today. Of course, we’ve known about this storm for at least a week because as soon as these news outlets can put the word snow in the forecast, they do. It could be 10 days from now, no matter, it gives the weather person and news anchor something to banter and hype for the next week and half. The local news in my area is on way too much for me, 3 hours in the morning, 1 hour at lunch, 2 ½ hours at dinner, 1 hour at 10pm and finally ½ hour at 11, 7 ½ hours of local news, gouge my eyes with a dull spoon, way too much news for me.

Of course, on the day before the storm, I can easily predict the big story and the first three reporter’s locations, one reporter in front of a salt hill, one reporter at the airport and the last at the supermarket, must be in the news outlet handbook for covering weather events. On the day of the storm, it’s endless news, reporters all over the area telling me it is snowing, this is very helpful, as I have no windows in my house and can’t walk out a door to see the snow!

The thing I never understand about snow hype, is the reaction, supermarkets and home improvement store fill up with people panic buying milk, bread, eggs and road salt. It’s not like these stores are going to close, they hardly ever do. Even after the storm, it’s not like our roads are impassable, we don’t live in the mountains of Montana, usually within a few hours the roads are clear, and everything returns to the normal chaos we live in.

For me, snowstorms are just a nuisance. I have to pull out the snowblower to clear the driveway, shovel the front walk and clear the cars. I guess it’s the military in me that doesn’t allow me to overreact, hell in the military we worked in all kinds of elements, rain, snow, sandstorms, even folks shooting at us while trying to maintain our aircraft, we just carry on. The one thing I miss more than anything about snow is sledding. I moved to the Roxbourgh section of Philly when I was 10, I like to call our neighborhood, Andorra Heights, just has a ring to it. We were a brand-new development; we weren’t even on the Philadelphia map, so we never got plowed. We also had three excellent hills within our neighborhood to sled on, and sledding we did! My friends and I would spend hours on those hills, with real sleds, Flexible Flyers, not these nonsense disc these kids have today. I miss those days when nobody cared about the weather reports and just went out and enjoyed the snow for all its fun!