Allred,
no problem, your venting brought up a good point. we arent out of the woods yet. im not saying that there wont be ANY bad storms, what me and sential
were getting at was that the weather channels sensationalize these things..and that we dont think their predictions will hold up.
for example, tonight there was a storm supposed to be hitting rockford illinois where i live. so at around 11am there was a storm watch on the TV.
that is prefectly reasonable. however, by lunch time there were 4 banners on my TV. one with the little picture of the state in the corner, on top of
that there were two color coded messages stating heat advidory and storm watch, and then a huge blue strip at the bottom of the screen scrolling with
text saying that there was a storm watch in effect for specific areas until 10 pm. and on top of that.... ALL FREAKING DAY the local news channels
kept breaking into my tv shows saying that there was a storm watch in effect. i mean come on it is JUST A WATCH! and it was until 10pm!!! it used to
be that you would have one little thing on the screen saying that there is a storm watch and then when it became a warning you would get the scroll
and the occassional interuption in your tv programs. and the sad thing is im only 20 so if i can remember when it wasnt this bad, that means its been
progressing pretty rapidly.
this has been getting so bad that the chicago news papers and the rockford register star ran stories about how ridiculous these things are and that
they are getting people scared for no reason, and people are also in turn not paying attention to the warnings and when bad things really do happen
people dont take the proper precautions.
well tonight the storm came at around 9:00pm here in rockford IL and it wasnt that bad at all, some hard rain and some cool lighting but i have seen
way worse. and it was over in like 30 minutes.
now i am totally in love with meteorology. in fact my dream of being a history professor works out perfectly because you have summers off ;p so the
last thing i want to do is knock on people who have made the choice to study the weather for a living.
but in all seriousness, and allred this is why i think your post was important, look at all the people in katrina and all the other hurricanes
throughout the year that never evacuate, and end up getting stranded or dying. i can't tell you how many times last year i heard people say in
interviews that they were staying at home because they didnt fully buy into what the weather channel was saying about the severity of the
hurricanes.
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but more on topic, why do you guys think it has been so quiet so far? and why do think they sensationalize these things? just more air time?
Thanks again for your posts, and im glad you guys like the topic
Digitalgrl