A. WRITES:

I just had to respond to your post about anxiety and weather as I think VFR is dangerously off the mark here. I am a weather journalist and I can assure you, extensively covering hurricanes and other major weather events is not about hype, fearmongering or overcompensation. A lot of the discussion of Irene smacks of disappointment that the disaster wasn’t worse in certain areas — that it “didn’t live up to the hype.” But I’m sure the people in Vermont and North Carolina would see it quite differently. Entire towns have been devastated by flash flooding. People have been crushed in their cars by falling tree limbs. At last count, 24 people died, many of them because they didn’t heed the copious warnings and insisted on going out in the storm.

Something I hear over and over again after there is a disaster, like a tornado or even just a particularly damaging thunderstorm, is “why wasn’t I given enough warning?” Well, people ARE warned, repeatedly, but get annoyed when the warnings cut into their television viewing time, like Beth M over at VFR. Or they simply choose to ignore the warnings, believing them to be pointless media “hype.”

It’s very frustrating to have people sit there and complain about hype before a disaster, then turn around and point fingers when they sustain injury or property damage. It takes five minutes to secure loose objects in your yard before a windstorm, but it could save you thousands in home repairs. It takes perhaps an hour to assemble a 72-hour emergency kit with candles, warm clothing, non-perishable food and a supply of medication, but then if the power goes out for a few days, you can just sit back and relax and play board games. When a tornado warning is issued for your area, go hang out in the basement for a few minutes. If a tornado doesn’t strike, great; but if it does, at least you’ll be alive. It’s always, always, always better to prepare for the worst — but if the worst doesn’t transpire in your area, be glad it didn’t!

The other thing I tell people is, we don’t want you to panic over weather warnings. There’s no sense giving yourself an anxiety attack over it. Weather disasters have always happened and will always happen. At some point in your life, one will probably happen to you. But if you know what to do, it will just be an interesting story to tell your friends rather than a deep personal tragedy.

So please, don’t encourage your readers to be cynical about weather warnings.

Laura writes:

The coverage of hurricanes and other major weather events is not all about hype. That is certainly true. Many people obviously benefit from the work of journalists who explain forecasts and report conditions. Some of these journalists do an excellent job and even those who simply report the latest from the National Weather Service give important information.

The science of weather forecasting has developed dramatically in the last 150 years, in ways few of us fully appreciate. In 1900, the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas,  on Sept. 8 killed from 6,000 to 12,000 people (the actual death toll will never be known). The storm was not forecast at all. People actually went out to the waterfront and stood watching the waves with no idea how dangerous they were. More than a thousand houses were destroyed.  The Sacred Heart Church in Galveston says a hurricane prayer every Sunday to this day.

However, in the previous entry, I spoke of the lack of a sense of proportion in weather coverage and I think this is a serious problem. At VFR, Lawrence Auster made the distinction between the necessary and the sensational. He wrote:

In this discussion I have not criticized weather forecasts or said that incorrect forecasts were the problem. I’ve said that the problem is the hysteria with which these forecasts are communicated to us, and the immersion of the whole society in this hysteria, though the 24/7 coverage.

If, as you say, the strength of a storm when it hits cannot be forecast with any certainty, then shouldn’t the media have been more circumspect and modest in its claims about what was going to happen, instead of screaming that “65 million people are facing catastrophe”?

The media do jump all over major storms or heat waves and sensationalize them. Given that forecasting, despite its amazing advances, still contains an element of uncertainty, and always will, there is an argument for predicting the worst and amplifying the worst so that people will be prepared. The good thing is that few people are not warned today. However, it seems the media go overboard so often with non-stop coverage that they risk causing people to tune out because so many dire scenarios have not come true.

To repeat, this is not at all to dismiss the value of warnings or all weather journalism. However, it is easy for a news outlet to focus on a storm to the exclusion of almost everything else because it offers a clear narrative. Everyone agrees that a major storm is bad. Editors are not required to think, or at least not much, in deciding how to interpret a storm. By covering weather, the editor makes no demands on his readers and that is an easy position to be in. But also in general the media do everything they can to manufacture anxiety and helplessness. (I’m not saying you do this in your weather coverage. This concerns the motivation for interpreting and playing stories in certain ways.) Anxiety and a feeling of helplessness are the two things they unconsciously seek to create. They want to create this feeling of dependence in the hope it makes people turn to them for the certainty they will never give.

 On a more basic level, the more dangerous the media make a storm seem, the higher ratings or readership will be because people feel it necessary to follow all the details. However, a storm or other major weather event can become a form of collective escapism and the media alone are not to blame for that. In the case of major snow storms, I think many people secretly hope a storm will be serious and shut everything down so that for a day or two they can enjoy a simpler existence.

                                                        — Comments —

Sal writes:

All the points raised on disastrous weather reporting are very good. The biggest caveat I can raise against what some call “hair on fire” weather reporting is that meteorologists could become the boy who cried “wolf” in the eyes of some. Not those persons who are determined to prove that they can outlast anything thrown at them by nature; there is no cure for stupidity. But the obedient who stock up, prepare for the very worst and then, nothing, or very little. Part of this is the wording: “650,000 people at risk” is  not every explicit. At risk for what? Flooding? Drowning? Glass falling fifty stories from blown-out windows? One day of power outage? Two? Three? Where, exactly?

The problem is two-fold: lack of predictability, which I don’t think is very well understood by the general public, and, as you point out, the quest for ratings. Coincidentally, I just received an e-mail ad for all the information my family and I will need to survive 2012 that employs a good bit of weather hype itself. If he hadn’t mentioned the Mayan calendar, I might have been tempted to purchase his package, just to see what it included.

And as a descendant of a survivor of the Great Galveston Flood, I have the deepest respect for the weather profession and appreciate the fine line they have to walk in their public service.

Diana writes:

A brief contribution regarding hurricane hype from someone who drove through it on Saturday and Sunday.

Much of the coverage that I saw in between driving was breathless and hysterical. The worst was some guy in a mac and galoshes in Lower Manhattan, screaming inanities at the top of his lungs, neglecting to tell us whether or not the bridges had been closed. That is truly the definition of content free fear-mongering.

But – if you were driving through New England you would not say that the fear itself was unwarranted or that politicians over-reacted. Parts of New England were relatively unaffected, but Vermont got smashed, as did watery parts of upper New York State. The fact that NYC dodged a bullet (sheer luck) doesn’t negate this. It was simply chance.

I have heard the second-guessers criticize “Nanny Bloomberg” for shutting down the subways. Bloomberg may indeed be an annoying character but they don’t know what they are talking about. He was quite right to shut down the subways. They are actually waterlogged sewers, which require 753 pumps functioning 24/7 to stay functional. The mayor simply could not take the chance that if even ONE of them had failed, there would have been disaster.

Please follow and like us: