The weatherman’s knowledge does not impress me at all
Posted on Wednesday, July 2, 2008
URL: http://www.nwanews.com/bvwv/Editorial/6650/
I wish weathermen would limit the amount of information they give us. It seems to me they are trying more to impress us with their knowledge than inform us with what is currently happening.
This all came to a head a week ago Sunday while Martha and I were watching the pending “ doom and gloom ” being offered by the NBC weatherman in Fayetteville. He was telling us how bad things were out there — something we actually already knew by simply looking out the window. But he was doing it in a way nobody but he and his weather buddies would understand.
First of all, instead of simply showing us the radar return, which will show us where the storm is and the direction of travel, he was giving us some kind of ultrasuper-duper-doppler radar that apparently provides four dimensions of the storm, or something like that. By the way, aren’t there only three dimensions ?
Oh, well.
On his little display, he showed us some spinning circles, saying those are the vortexes of the storm center, or something like that. I’m not sure if he is telling us there are tornadoes in each of those spinning circles or not. I’m not quite sure what they were or what they were supposed to mean to me.
Why can’t these guys do the same thing.
I want them to stop talking down to us and assuming we know what they are talking about.
Then there is the “ percent ” chance of rain they give us. No two TV station weathermen, or women ever give the same numbers. NBC might be 40 percent and ABC 20. And CBS will usually fall somewhere in between.
And then, more likely than not, it doesn’t even rain.
Why can’t they all get together, perhaps on a conference call some time before the show starts, and get their stories synchronized ?
I am getting more and more like my friend in New Jersey who would have the weatherman, or woman, come on camera, provide the current temperature and then go off camera. There they will wait until I want more information, at which
Then he turned the whole display on its side to give us yet another look. That time he showed a big white glob and said it indicated hail. And all the time he was using words such as “ obvious ” and “ clearly visible, ” even though to the untrained eye, none of it is.
I have some weather training, enough to make the most basic of forecasts based on what I see out time I will call them.
• • • Douglas Grant is managing editor of The Weekly Vista. He has been a journalist since 1987 and worked in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida.