I was stunned, stunned I tell you, to awaken today to green grass, clear sidewalks and streets, and nothing approaching the weather Armageddon scene predicted by the local weather types.
When is the last time this happened? Are you kidding me? The weather overkill forecast trend is reminiscent of the old yarn about the stock market being a leading economic indicator, having predicted eight of the last two recessions.
It was only yesterday, while driving granddaughter No. 2 to our house following getting her off the school bus at her house, that she eagerly spoke of a day off school Tuesday, or at least a two-hour delay.
Apparently she’d gotten wind, likely through her teacher or other kids, of the apocalyptic weather forecast for Monday night into Tuesday morning.
I tried to assure the child these things tend to be overblown, although I did not use my favorite term for the phenomenon – weather porn – since she is but six years or age.
“No, Poppy,” she argued, “the weather people are always right.”
Ah, the innocence of youth. She still probably believes there are boys and girls and she can easily tell the difference, that white people are not the devil incarnate and children with two mommies are not the norm.
I told her we would wait and see what the next day provided.
It was evident by early evening Monday that schools were falling into line, one-by-one, in bowing to the wishes of the weather porn purveyors, calling for two-hour delays, outright canceling classes, or calling for the students to work from home.
Allow me to add as an aside that I was out Monday putting gasoline in various cars, not because I was terrified I could not do so today (one is, after all, a four-wheel drive Jeep Cherokee and one other is an all-wheel drive Kia SUV).
I just needed gasoline and bought same, being distressed along the way that the regular unleaded gasoline was 11 cents cheaper per gallon at Giant Eagle Get/Go than it had been at Sheetz, even with the 3-cent discount for using my Sheetz card. I’d only gone to Get/Go due to having $11 in gasoline credit accumulated, this having been relayed to me by the wife.
While pumping gas, after a woman had raced ahead of me to grab a pump on one side of the building, forcing me to move to the other side of the building, another woman engaged me in conversation as the gasoline flowed into our vehicles.
Said woman professed surprise the stores were not more crowded, what with the bad storm coming and all that.
She alluded to the predictable rush to stores for bread, milk and toilet paper once the weather porn types overhype an approaching storm, or “event” as they seem to prefer.
Well, this event was nowhere near as bad as predicted. And yet my wife still was eager to get the latest misinformation from the local NBC outlet’s noon report.
To get to the weather, we had to sit through an anchor for whom English seems to be her second language. She spoke of a Central Pennsylvania contractor Leonard S. Fiore, only she pronounced it LEE-ON-HARD where most would say LEN-ARD.
Later, there was a story of an “18th-month-old” child. Most I know would say 18-month-old, but why quibble?
At last it was weather time. There were no apologies for having blown the call, no promises to do better moving forward.
Instead, the rain/snow event was glossed over, as in it had “cleared out” and we were in store for a “nice” afternoon and tomorrow.
“Quiet weather” was another term tossed around — presumably birds would be silent, as would be children and otherwise noisy constituencies.
The quiet weather actually had begun much earlier than they had predicted in their noise of yesterday, which is how it goes in the weather porn game. To paraphrase the catch phrase from the movie “Love Story,” weather means you never have to say you’re sorry.
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