Whether or Not...

"Mom! Mom, hurry! What channel is The Weather Channel on?"

"I don't know, sweetie, try 224."

"No, that's not it! Please, Mom, I just have to see The Weather Channel! Puh-lease, Mom!!"

"For goodness sake, here I come. What's so important about The Weather Channel, Buddy?"

"I have to see if we're having a tornado or a hurricane today."

A young mother, someone I barely know, is standing beside me when she says, apropos of nothing, "My son is obsessed with the weather." Is she talking to me? I turn to look at her, then I look around. I guess so, since there is no one else nearby. Then she goes on to give me the above verbatim recounting as an example. She has more examples:

One day in the car he says, "Mom, what would happen if a tornado came right now? Right this minute! What would you do? What would we do? Do you have a plan?"

Or, "Mom, are we in an earthquake fault line?"

"Where does he get this stuff? He's only six years old," she tells me. "I mean, I try to reassure him, but …" My head swirls with thoughts and possible comments, but someone walks over and interrupts us...

***

“If you don’t see it, we ain’t got it!” the store clerk calls out over his shoulder. Staples, especially bottled water, fly off the shelves, as people shop for the pending ‘blizzaster,” (a word coined by The Weather Channel, I'm certain.) I’ve chosen eggs, flour, milk, chicken, frozen vegetables, bottled water and, okay I admit it, a couple, two-three bottles of wine. But, my admiration is reserved for the priorities of the elderly (read: someone older than me) lady behind me, who buys a case of beer, a box of wine, one bottle each of gin, vodka, whiskey, scotch, & two other bottles I could swear are alcohol-related.

***

Her memo went out: “Urgent: Please be aware that all staff and faculty are urged to make proper arrangements to leave early today, as The Weather Channel has indicated that snow-laden and icy road conditions are imminent.” This was issued by our new dean at the University. She hails from Seattle, where apparently they are not accustomed to sudden winter storms.

Chicago, January 1967, Foster Avenue

***

"Are y'all visiting? 'Cause not ever-body in these parts has fancy winter clothing like y'all got."

When the recent "polar vortex" hit the U.S. we were in Gulfport Mississippi. Without The Weather Channel I might not have known that there was a proper scientific name for what I'd called my whole life an "arctic blast." The temperature that sunny day on the gulf coast was 43 degrees fahrenheit. My husband and I, accustomed to frigid Midwest winters, were comfortably strolling about while the local southerners were shivering all around us.

One of the benefits of modern technology is our ability to have constant input regarding weather. Experts say that weather predictions have become significantly more accurate in the last twenty years, at least for short-range (three day or less) predictions. And that's a benefit, right? I mean, it's good that meteorologists can provide advanced warnings and increased lead times for severe weather, thus giving us time to prepare for hurricanes, tornados, flash floods, blizzards and such.

This increased accuracy has come from the use of satellites, radar, and most importantly the profiler computer programs that crunch the satellite and radar data. I guess that's a heck of a lot better than the folklore my grandparents and great-grandparents relied on, such as "an abundance of spider webs in trees" or, "frequent rains in early November" or "unusually tall beaver lodges" or "a sudden disappearance of frogs," all indicating a hard, cold winter. Seriously, who among us these days has time to notice nature's anomalies and their relationship to weather?

But, a disadvantage comes with this technological knowledge in the form of an increasing obsession with weather. Thanks to The Weather Channel, weather updates play on television, 24-7-365.

Besides comedy, the entertainment industry has always relied on suspense, danger, action, drama and horror to draw our attention. Somewhere along the way The Weather Channel figured out that if those were the elements necessary to grab us, well then, "weather" delivered on most accounts. Let's face it, there is pretty much always a catastrophe somewhere, hoards of people standing around in dismay amongst ruins. They use weather to play to our fears:

"Bone-chilling Cold Cripples Air Travel"

"Historic Freeze: Wind chills 65 Below Zero"

"Chicago's Low Temperature Smashes Records"

"Life-Threatening Heat Wave"

"Life-Threatening Drought"

"Life-Threatening Cold"

"Frost Quakes"

"Snowstorm Godzilla"

"Exposed Skin May Freeze in Minutes"

"Lowest temperatures in twenty years" "…Thirty years" "…Forty years!!!" 

"100 Year Flood"

 Scary! Isn't it? And that's just the U.S.A. coverage. The Weather Channel also covers the world's weather.

"Winds of up to 90 miles an hour and heavy rain battered Scotland on Thursday…"

"Heavy storms sweeping across the North Sea…"

"Record-Shattering Drought in… 

"Tsunami Kills Thousands…"

Throw in the earthquakes, volcanos, and weather-related wildfires and you've got material to frighten anyone, especially a bright little six-year-old boy.

Meanwhile as we, in the U.S., fret about the polar vortex, our neighbors in Canada fire up their backyard grill, head for the outdoor hot tub and crack open a can of beer. And I think back to my native ancestors. They dealt with similar fluctuations in weather. They dealt with brutal winters. How did they cope? They hunkered down in their primitive dwellings, wrapped in their animal skins and “chilled” (pun intended) until the storm passed.

The Weather Channel's growth has exploded since their inception in 1982. And weather coverage has become such that, to keep pace, the regular networks will allow a storm to trump most any news with the exception of a major shooting or the death of a very famous person.

So when one of the people I follow on Twitter tweeted:

"A crucial resource was removed from 20 million homes. Tell DIRECTV there's no substitute for The Weather Channel!"

followed by a link to a petition, I knew that as much as I respect her intellect,  she was just plain wrong…, she was perhaps misinformed..., she and I saw things differently.

To me The Weather Channel, sort of like Duck Dynasty, simply became too full of themselves. They lost their way, perhaps blinded by the dazzling brightness of the television lights. In the lulls between major weather events they’d begun to run shows like Storm Stories, It Could Happen Tomorrow and Highway Thru Hell. And they somehow failed to realize that they are no longer the only source for up-to-date weather or radar maps. I, for one, favor my NOAA app. 

So, when I hear Jim Cantore whining sound-off to customers about the possibility of DirecTV  dropping The Weather Channel from their lineup over a monetary dispute: 

"I told him how many of our viewers, especially in rural areas, rely on our service to keep them informed and safe when weather threatens." 

"I think it’s a dangerous gamble to put lives at risk for a penny. I think you’ll agree. Nobody can do weather like we do. Nobody."

I think to myself, heck, if DirecTV can drop The Weather Channel and save me a penny, I'm all for it. Like my grandmother used to say, "The fiercer the storm, the quicker it passes."