You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Winter Blizzard of 2014.
The projections are for record cold, icy roads, and perhaps an inch of snow.
A whole inch of snow.
Watch out people, an inch of snow might be coming.
An inch? Think about it.
An inch might not even cover an acorn in the grass.
An inch is about the lowest measurement we use in America.
Give em an inch, they’ll take a mile.
Well, give weather people an inch associated with the word snow and they will take a mile.
They say it’s going to be cold. Record Cold. The coldest temperatures we’ve had in 2 decades.
Single digits.
OMG.
Life threatening cold they say.
So melodramatic.
Have these folks never been skiing or ice fishing or experienced single digit cold before?
Last time I checked, very few people die because of the cold weather. Usually they die from all the other reasons people die.
Car crashes and heart attacks and slipping and falling.
It just happens to be life threatening cold.
Did the cold make the man drive his car into the phone pole?
No that would be a bottle of schnapps.
Oh.
The producer’s voice sadens.
You sure it wasn’t the cold.
Nope.
Peppermint schnapps.
Oh.
Tragedy that news rooms can plan for is the most insane kind of news coverage.
On the coast its hurricanes.
In the middle of the country, it’s ice storms.
And It’s been a slow percolating scare campaign for days now.
Rationale thought is out. Dire predictions are in.
And the rambling wreck of rhetoric is going into its 4th day as of this writing.
It’s been like a countdown clock to end of days.
The weather people have been studying their maps and projections and long-term forecasts and they keep saying it’s going to be bad, it’s going to shut down schools, it is going to affect the morning commute.
PEOPLE WILL DIE.
BUY MILK NOW. DON’T DELAY.
No they didn’t say that, but the alarm in their collective weather voice is starting to get seriously tiresome.
Weather people, by and large are friendly, jovial, good-natured soft-hearted geeks.
They love weather for goodness sakes. They get excited by high pressure systems and they like to talk about what the wind feels like on your skin.
Nobody talks about how something feels on your skin outside of a dermatologist and perhaps a hooker.
So when mild-mannered weather people get a computer model that gets blood rushing to their special weather places, well it is a storm tracking love affair.
It’s like revenge of the nerds only with computer generated graphics.
They arm themselves with data and empirical talk and then convey this to the news brokers who change schedules and on call lists.
And that’s how it starts.
Thursday the dinner bell was rung.
By Friday the weather disaster could be smelled cooking in the weather department’s forecasting kitchen.
By Saturday the emails and the texts were flying like dust in the wind.
I got a text from my chief photographer addressed to 13 other people.
How nervous are they?
Some of the people who got this emergency text no longer work for the company. The former employees were cordial enough to also respond to the call.
Once a TV journalist, always a TV journalist. Ha.
The logistics are mind numbing.
“We’ll get you a hotel room downtown” one text read.
I thought about it.
Does it come with room service and call girls?
I didn’t respond.
Then the email telling me how to apply cat litter to icy walks.
Huh?
“Don’t bring your cat the email quipped.
That’s how ludicrous it is at this point.
Emails began raining down on my inbox saying we need to win.
Win what?
The storm? The ratings? The race to buy milk at the super market? To close the schools and alter lives?
I’m glad we are preparing. There is nothing wrong with preparation. Perhaps you can never over prepare.
I know my co-workers. They are ready.
They all have as much time with snow-boots on the ground as I do.
They know how to cover a disaster. They know when the Snow hits the fan how to rock and roll.
The outside people have always known how to attack a storm.
We wear layers and bundle up and put those hot packs in our socks and our gloves.
We drive on roads that have been closed by the department of public works, we drive on highways that salt and brine don’t work on.
We are professional video journalists.
We put our game faces on, like football players, and we psyche up for what is going to be a tough go.
The problem is sometimes, the decisions come from inside the warm toasty news rooms of America.
People who make decisions usually sit on a comfy chair in a warm office. People pulling the strings have access to rest room facilities and hot coffee. I’m sad to say it, but these people only know it’s cold because it took them 30 seconds to walk from the parking lot to the front door. They only know it’s snowing if they are by a window.
The weather people agitate. The inside people stir the pot.
What you end up with is a news stew that doesn’t always taste good.
In some ways I hope it’s worse than expected so the public doesn’t lose confidence in us.
I hate when we predict severe weather and it ends up being a false alarm.
An inch?
It ain’t much.
Pee Wee Herman is packing more than an inch in a cold shower.
My barometer for storms is always 1989’s Idaho white out.
I was in an army chopper hovering over a blanket of white, perhaps 10 feet deep.
The soldier opened the door allowing a whirlwind of icy rotor wash into the compartment.
I focus my lens on the blinding, unyielding white of nothing.
“Down there,” he points.
That’s when I see my first hoof, my first horn, protruding through the top of the snow bank.
Somewhere below me, a 1,000 head of cattle are frozen solid.
In one night, an Idaho Cattleman has lost it all, his entire herd, his entire livelihood.
This is life altering cold.
10 feet and 20 below zero.
A thousand cows dead over night.
It was so cold, swan heads broke off. Swan Heads are attached by thin, long necks. Don’t ask me how, but the swan’s necks literally snapped off like twigs. I know this, because I held them to demonstrate how cold it was in a stand up that is still legendary, at least in my own mind.
One inch.
Single digits.
Kids won’t go to school.
Commuters might be late to work or maybe miss a Monday.
So what.
I am looking at the long-term forecast.
Looks like it will be almost 60 by the end of the week.
Oh My God.
Hydrate. You might perspire to death.
Life’s Crazy™