Weather Panic

Well, the meteorologists (a.k.a. "Severe Weather Team") are hard at work this morning. Apparently they've been up since before the crack of dawn, measuring barometric pressure, temperature, relative humidity and making predictions about snow accumulation in East Tennessee. They've all donned their Northface parkas and Thinsulate gloves and ventured out into the medians of the highways, dodging traffic and camped out on the back porches of the studios to warn us about bad road conditions and slick steps.

They are disappointed, I know, that this is not a repeat of the infamous Blizzard of '93. Though I was living in RI at that time (where winter weather is never really news), I understand that some of the news and weathercasters never left the studios, not bathing or grooming during the blizzard and aftermath! Such dedication is rarely found in this day and age.

This morning, though there is almost no accumulation to speak of, they've pre-empted the network morning shows to zoom around the East Tennessee region, showing various degrees of winter weather. School closings are scrolling across the screen. People are calling in from all points in the viewing area talking about the person they saw sliding on the highway and the dusting of snow on the windshield. We even had one video clip of a truck sliding about 10 feet.

I'm sure there is no bread or milk to be had in any grocery store in the area. I guess snowy weather brings about an insatiable desire in many people for "milktoast", whatever that is.

This year (where there has not been so much as a 1/2 inch accumulation of snow or ice where I live), I've learned some new weather vocabulary in these frantic reports. This morning I heard a weathercaster talking about "heavy flurries", which seems to me to be an oxymoron. A few weeks ago, when we had an unexpected freeze (catching the meteorologists off-guard apparently), one weatherman was asked if what we were seeing was "sleet or freezing rain". His reply was, "Neither. What we are seeing is really ice fragments." I guess someone or something was shattering a glacier hovering far above us and the fragments were falling to earth. Maybe it was Johnny Depp, a.k.a. Edward Scissorhands creating an ice sculpture! Of course the fallback position is to label it all a "wintry mix".

Right now I am seeing a picture on the weather report of snow in a place called Petros (pronounced pee-tros), Tennessee. This brings me to another oddity of winter weather reporting: we learn about obscure places, which are apparently blanketed like a winter wonderland and we often get to see obscure people, with the appropriate hillbilly accent, offering commentary. Last night, for instance, the news featured a rotund grocery store employee predicting there would be no snow or bad weather. This prophecy was based on the lack of sensation in his bad knee. Thank God for his obesity, without which we would not have a weather forecast or a news story! Unfortunately, this morning they replayed his forecast and proved him wrong. So much for folk-meteorology.

I'm going to go enjoy the "heavy flurries".