31 January

Fearing The Weather

by Jon Katz

The much talked about Polar Vortex arrived here last night and this morning, and it is cold, although not nearly as cold as the people in the Midwest have experienced. I am thinking of them.

I want to say that I am a firm believer in climate change and its impact on our world, one doesn’t really need anything more than their own eyes and ears to see it. But I have also witnessed for all of my life the depredations caused by the corporate takeover of our media and our popular culture, from books to music.

The new corporately owned weather channels have personalized and over-hyped our weather and turned it into yet another profit center. It used to be free, and it used to simple present the weather, not give it names and super hype it for weeks ahead of time.

The weather channels have taught us to fear and dread Mother Nature. When I moved to the country in 2003, it was often – 20 or -30, there were blizzards after blizzards, bone-chilling cold and high winds and giant mounds of snow.

A farmer friend stopped by one day and said “you know, I never knew the winter was so dangerous until my wife bought me a tv set.

This morning, it was – 4 when we got up, not really unusual for January, My phone was buzzing with warnings, alerts and notifications. Armageddon was approaching. Stay inside, cover our face. Old people like me with heart conditions should get into bed and stay there.

I am not one for nostalgia, but I remember in the pre-weather channel days that storms were not give cute and endearing names, we were not bombarded with terrifying maps showing monstrous weather systems rushing to devour us.

Farmers have always needed to know about the weather, and the National Weather Service provided excellent, timely and useful information about storms. They didn’t need to give them names, they called it “winter,” and we weren’t bombarded for days breathless commentary and terrifying videos patronizing us by urging us to dress warmly and cover our faces.

They didn’t need to tell us how to dress or when to go outside, they just gave us the weather. I could take it from there.

As my neighbor says, any idiot who doesn’t know to dress warmly in mid-winter has bigger problems than the weather.

I revel in every single shovel, scraping of the roof, brushing off of the cars. If the wind chill is – 60, I will happily stay inside. If it is just another cold winter morning, I’m out there and on it.

It is, of course, to get reliable and timely information about the weather, especially as the climate does change. But I deeply resent the fear-mongering, it is not designed to inform us, but to scare the wits out of us so that we can sign up for those obnoxious alerts and notifications, and so they can charge advertisers three times as much as normal for big storms.

Does everything have to be a profit center in the Corporate Nation? I resist the idea that winter is our enemy, or that Mother Nature is out to eat us all up. If I hadn’t been bombarded with Polar Vortex news all week, I would have thought this morning was just another cold winter morning.

In our culture, the corporations have numbed us to hype and greed. “I love my weather channel,” Jane e-mailed me the other day, “I love the videos showing just how cold it will be and where.”

Maybe I’ll give these storms some twin names of my own: hype and bullshit.

To those of you in the heartland, who really are suffering from a brutal winter, I wish you warmth and peace and comfort.

11 Comments

  1. So true. I am in the Midwest, and it was awfully cold yesterday, but I am lucky to be retired and I just stayed home. I never watch any weather on tv, in fact I rarely watch tv anymore at all. I don’t have a smart phone, so no “alerts” coming at me that way. I check National Weather Service website when I need to know what the weather will be, otherwise I don’t worry about it. I do really feel for the postal carriers who walk 10 or more miles a day delivering mail, and the farmers who must feed and water their livestock, regardless of weather, and all the other folks who have to be out in bad weather, whether winter or summer.

  2. Jon, as usual you have hit the nail ON THE HEAD!!! SO TRUE, here in my rural neck of the WI. woods…it is actual MINUS 29 with the wind chill of 50below. Not great but we are tough and even our animals soldier through! We certainly take precautions…reinforce their barn, more hay…keeping the dog and kitties inside and dressing in many layers before trudging outside to tend to the flock. You and your writing are beacons of sanity in a world of crazy. I thank you AND Maria for bringing sunshine and warmth to so many who lack!~ Stay warm and cuddle !!!!

  3. Hello from Minnesota. Advance weather forecasts allow time for a community to plan how to house homeless, how to manage when public transportation doesn’t function, what to do when there are power outages and the many other functions of society fail. We can survive safely if we are prepared. Our healthcare workers at Mayo Clinic are essential employeee and plans were made to ensure that they were able to get to work safely. Without reliable weather forecasts it would be difficult to be prepared. We have the choice of relying on news sources that provide facts.

    1. Patricia, thanks for the thoughtful note. The National Weather Service has always provided advanced weather forecasts, days ahead of storms, it is in fact their forecasts that the commercial networks are using, only they are much hyped up with ratings and warnings, and assume people are too ignorant to fend for themselves. Nobody, surely not me, is arguing against advanced forecasting, it obviously saves lives and helps people prepare. But it is striking to me how people overlook the commercialization and hype-for-profit that they have added to the weather, which was always good and clear, at least to me. I’m not aware of anyone who is arguing against reliable weather forecasts that are based on facts. You are describing the weather forecasters who used to work for free, and who still provide the forecasts corporations make tens of millions of dollars copying and jazzing up. Do reliable warnings require giving human names to weather systems? Warnings sell, extreme warnings sell more..just look at the ads.

  4. I rely on http://www.weather.gov for my weather information and Weatherbug for my forecasts. It’s free, no hype or storm names. I agree with you about The Weather Channel. They have turned into a hype machine. I stopped relying on and listening to them over 20 years ago. Nothing but doom and gloom. One look at an outdoor thermometer tells you how to dress if you’re going outside for any length of time. Common sense, like yours, needs to make a comeback. How do we turn off the hysteria and go back 50 years to honest TV news and weather? Simply turning it off helps.

  5. Here in the Catskills, we have simplified things.

    There are two elements: Climate Change and Weather.

    Climate change is a big, overall issue and will take a lot to solve.

    Weather is simply four seasons:

    1- Almost Winter
    2- Winter
    3-Still Winter
    4-Road Construction and Repair

  6. Hahahah…. hype and bullshit would not be profitable if people tuned out. There are two sides to this equation.. Willing participants who hang on every word need to turn on their brains and turn off the idiot box. Stop playing the victim.

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