Li’l Baby Scaia was a big fan of meteorology. Back in the olden days, I’d space out to The Weather Channel when they, you know, talked about the weather instead of sending Jim Cantore into whatever disaster.
Funny Jim Cantore story: I was working in Houston for Hurricane Ike. During situations like this, emergency management agencies prefer everyone to stay together, so one hotel stayed stayed open on Galveston Island for police, firefighters, the National Guard and media.
During the worst of the storm, just about everyone was camped out in the lobby. The San Luis is a fantastic resort. They left one door un-bolted so TV reporters could scurry outside, do their live shot holding down their hat and telling you how totally unsafe it is to be outside and then scurry back in. When Jim Cantore went out there, some of the firefighters tried to hold the door shut when he came back.
I had to go microphone shovin’ just this morning after a severe storm hit the area. One gentleman explained he was just glad to have made it off the freeway before his car died. He had lost control in high water and hit a wall on I-30.
After the snowstorm last month, he reasonably suggested Mother Nature is bi-polar.
I bring all this up because I decided to minor in meteorology for some reason. I feel like that makes me an authority on the issue of the National Weather Service launching a project to update its terminology.
A small minority of people, just a few, may not understand the difference, for example, between a “Special Weather Statement” and an “Advisory.”
By simplifying the terminology, the National Weather Service hopes to reduce confusion about when a tornado is about to hit your hatchet barn and when a tornado might just hypothetically hit your hatchet barn later this afternoon.
The tones they use are set at a frequency to be the most audible over the greatest distance, which is why they’re so irritating. That explains why you don’t hear the soothing voice of Barry White explaining that if you take cover now, everything’s gonna be just fine. Perhaps as part of this update, the National Weather Service might update those tones because we all get warnings on our phones.
The work of Barry White might just be a bit expensive for the National Weather Service’s taste. Instead, we might launch warnings using the sound from the Ghostbusters car.
When a tornado warning is issued, in addition to the sirens going off, the warning usually includes the phrase, “Take cover now!”
That could be updated with a warning from Governor Lepetomane since Blazing Saddles is right on the cusp of what’s hot in pop culture. Plus, the sound of the whip would be sure to grab attention.
The update will also end the “Special Weather Statement.” Instead of “2 to 4 inches of snow over the northern part of the county warning area,” they might just post “You might get up to 4 inches of snow tomorrow morning, so that could affect commuters on I-30.”
An aside: People may feel dispirited about the past year, but we live in a world where you can easily locate Price is Right music in just a few moments. If someone’s bringing you down about pronouns or the deficit, just start playing the “too bad” horn on your phone.
To make the weather project easy to understand, it’s called, and I swear this is true, HazSimp. The federal government is really fast-tracking it, too. You’ve only got three years to comment.
