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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.go
by 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 agoIt wasn't technically a hurricane anymore when it made landfall on the mainland US, which probably contributed to the superstorm name sticking.
- testguy34 12y agoIt 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 agoI 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.