Northeast Ohio TV stations are waging weather wars again.
It always happens this time of year: Every station worth its (road) salt has some kind of fancy doodad to predict if tomorrow will bring snow, sleet, black ice, toxic rain or that Holy Grail of rarities, sunshine. Viewers are inundated with Doppler radar, Power of Five radar, Dual-Doppler XL radar; forecasts beamed from Michigan, from fishing trawlers on the shores of Lake Erie, live from the far side of Uranus (“Hey, Beavis, he said Uranus”); and information from local weather watchers who do little more than stick a ruler into snow on windowsills as an official gauge of precipitation.
All this before TV roosters start crowing about closings and delays, available on air in scrolling bars (one bar for alphabetical lists by county, another for “breaking news” cancellations), online and via text messages straight from the weather gods to our cell phones.
In the days of old when knights were bold, we sat next to a little transistor radio in the kitchen, its one speaker crackling musty hits by Linda Ronstadt, Frank Sinatra and the Turtles, waiting breathlessly for an announcer to intone our school’s name. Sometimes, we received news that school had been cancelled only after we had suited up in thermal underwear, boots and coats and waited glumly by the door for the bus. When word came, Mom stuck spoons in our mouths to keep us from swallowing our tongues during this communications convulsion.
Last month, I received school closing news by an automated phone call from my district, a text message from Channel 3, postings from teacher friends on Facebook, and on the TV, all within 30 seconds -- from the superintendent’s lips to God’s ears, as they say.
My wife still had to stick a spoon in my mouth, but at least I didn’t have to put on long johns and wait by the door.
As nice as all this instantaneous news is, it’s usually TMI. Where the weather is concerned, I’m not too worried about what’s coming tomorrow or later in the week, but with what’s going on right now.
To that end, my preferred form of weather communication is not Doppler radar, but Doggler radar, information gleaned from sending my faithful hound, Molly, into the back yard well before dawn every morning.
If she comes back wet, it’s raining. If she comes back white, it’s snowing. When she’s so white I have to sweep the snow off her back, it’s serious accumulation. On those rare occasions when I hear her toenails scrabbling for purchase on the back porch, it’s icy.
When she doesn’t come back at all, I’ve either forgotten to latch the back gate or it’s so temperate that she’s sunning herself on the lawn. (When it’s the former, a long-suffering neighbor drags her by the collar to the front door. If the latter, prodigious coaxing with biscuits is necessary.)
Forecasting has come a long way in the last few decades, and early warnings have no doubt saved many lives that might otherwise have been lost in tornadoes, floods, and other extreme weather situations, but for run-of-the-mill weather, it’s generally more than we need.
Most of the time, TV weather turns the audience into a pack of Pavlov’s dogs: when some handsome or pretty face tells us to stay tuned to learn if the latest storm is going to wreak havoc with our commute, we practically salivate on cue and stay glued through another set of moronic commercials, only to learn that the weather pattern du jour has veered south somewhere over Pennsylvania and skies will be clear.
Or it hasn’t, and they won’t.
Either way, the sun will come up tomorrow -- even if we don’t see it -- and I’ll send my four-legged Dick Goddard doggedly into battle, reading her communiques from the front without corporate sponsorship, network chest-thumping and pesky ads.
I wrote this in January 2011 for The Alliance Review. Molly was two dogs ago, but dual-doggler forecasting works with any canine.
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