I HATE THE NEWS: Winter Weather Advisory

If you don't know me well, I'll tell you: I HATE THE NEWS. It's a long drawn out story that will unfold as I blog here, but I guess my distrust of the audio-visual information entertainment medium to which we like to give a ridiculous amount of importance started when I returned home from college.

See, I went to Potsdam. Potsdam is known for two things... A kick ass music school, and snow. You've heard the joke - Potsdam has two seasons: winter and July 15th. We once had so much snow in Potsdam that it buried the first floor of my dorm, and people went to the second floor and tobogganed out the windows. Through it all, they never cancelled classes. We went out into the snow. If you need to shovel, you shovel. You need to be careful on the ice, DUH! yeah, it's icy! But you shovel, you bundle up, you be careful, leave a half hour earlier, and you go to class.

So after 4 years of that, I go back to Long Island, and I hear on the news three words I never heard before: "Winter Weather Advisory." Now I'm thinking, from the panic and urgency in the voices of the reporters that we're getting falling ice balls, 55 mph winds, you know, the kind of weather you need Rudolph for. So I gear up for the worst. And what happens?

Snow. A light dusting. Maybe 3 inches. Easily shoveled. THAT'S what we need an advisory for? All I could think was, "When did Long Islanders become such pussies?" Because of the fanatical reports from the news, all the schools were closed, but it wasn't even worth playing in.

I learned that if you want to know what the weather is, look out the window. I also learned something that still eludes everyone. You can't predict the weather. A weatherperson can tell you there are clouds coming this way, and there are winds at a certain speed, or the air is a certain temperature. But unless they are also skilled in the dark arts, unless their midiclorion count is off the charts, they can't tell us for sure what's going to happen tomorrow. They can tell us what they THINK MIGHT happen IF nothing changes. How often have weatherpeople's predictions been wrong? They know it. Listen carefully to their language; a CHANCE of showers, temperatures somewhere in the high 50s. Very vague.

As I write this we're in the middle of a HUGE SNOWSTORM. or so they would have us believe. The news just said that we got 12 inches. I was just outside. We got 4 inches tops. Stop listening to the news. Get your info first hand.

*PLease comment at http://cjferrara.blogspot.com/ I want to start a discussion.!