5 ms·

After watching the same ridiculous news reporting touting "historic", "storm of the century", "unprecedented", etc., year after year, the more cynical side of m

by dougk16 12y ago

After watching the same ridiculous news reporting touting "historic", "storm of the century", "unprecedented", etc., year after year, the more cynical side of me suggests that there's a small supplemental reason besides flawed models: there's probably good money to be made from overhyping storms. At the very least news stations must get great ratings the day or two beforehand. Note that this doesn't preclude accurate estimating...you just have to pull a bunch of cheap psychological tricks to get people to focus on the worst case scenario. The end result of people freaking out is still largely the same. One reason this comes to mind is that I can't ever remember a storm reaching its worst-case snowfall predictions, and usually they barely make the minimums. A rule of thumb I use is to treat the minimum prediction as the actual maximum and zero as the actual minimum. Anecdotal, but seems to work well.

icehawk219 12y ago
The "play up the fear" stuff around weather reporting in recent years is why I've given up even attempting to use weather forecasts from anywhere but weather.gov which is sourced directly from The National Weather Service and NOAA. It's just a straight up information dump, no annoying ads or fear mongering for clicks. When I heard they were naming blizzards last year, and this year now, I was only momentarily shocked because it was the next logical step. This has far more severe consequences then just clickbaiting though. When Hurricane Irene was moving up the coast a few years ago they did the typical "storm of the century, omg a billion people might die!!!" routine and we got light wind and rain. The following year they did it again with Hurricane Sandy (I really hate when people call it Superstorm Sandy ... it was a small hurricane! We were just ill-prepared for it) and a whole lot of people didn't buy into it and paid the price. I'm only 27 but I have trouble remembering a time where every thunderstorm we got wasn't played up to be an extinction level event. At this point I have my small cache of supplies and otherwise completely ignore storm predictions for the most part.
- maxerickson 12y ago
  It wasn't technically a hurricane anymore when it made landfall on the mainland US, which probably contributed to the superstorm name sticking.
- testguy34 12y ago
  It was the NWS in this case who was playing up the fear. The useual suspect, The Weather Channel, is the only one who got it right.
  - icehawk219 12y ago
    I didn't realize that. My only exposure to weather reports at this point is actually just going to weather.gov and saying "ok, might get snow, I'll go the store tonight instead of tomorrow". And stuff like this is precisely why.

by dougk16 12y ago

icehawk219 12y ago

The "play up the fear" stuff around weather reporting in recent years is why I've given up even attempting to use weather forecasts from anywhere but weather.gov which is sourced directly from The National Weather Service and NOAA. It's just a straight up information dump, no annoying ads or fear mongering for clicks. When I heard they were naming blizzards last year, and this year now, I was only momentarily shocked because it was the next logical step. This has far more severe consequences then just clickbaiting though. When Hurricane Irene was moving up the coast a few years ago they did the typical "storm of the century, omg a billion people might die!!!" routine and we got light wind and rain. The following year they did it again with Hurricane Sandy (I really hate when people call it Superstorm Sandy ... it was a small hurricane! We were just ill-prepared for it) and a whole lot of people didn't buy into it and paid the price. I'm only 27 but I have trouble remembering a time where every thunderstorm we got wasn't played up to be an extinction level event. At this point I have my small cache of supplies and otherwise completely ignore storm predictions for the most part.

maxerickson 12y ago
It wasn't technically a hurricane anymore when it made landfall on the mainland US, which probably contributed to the superstorm name sticking.
testguy34 12y ago
It was the NWS in this case who was playing up the fear. The useual suspect, The Weather Channel, is the only one who got it right.
- icehawk219 12y ago
  I didn't realize that. My only exposure to weather reports at this point is actually just going to weather.gov and saying "ok, might get snow, I'll go the store tonight instead of tomorrow". And stuff like this is precisely why.