The Capital region is still recovering from "the storm of '03". We got about 2 feet of snow starting late Saturday night/Sunday morning, continuing through mid-day Monday. Some far-flung rural areas in western parts of Maryland and Virginia, as well as the eastern parts of West Virginia got 3 to 4 feet of snow. This is on top of the 3 inches or so that we got the preceding Friday.
Usually, a prediction of 3" of snow means "sloppy driving" and a general nuisance. Because this region does not get a lot of snow on average, and many people who live here do not come from areas like Colorado or Buffalo that routinely get feet of snow per snowstorm, even the slightest bit of accumulation can close area schools for the day, or at least delay opening two hours or so.
The Sunday snow storm was predicted for a good week ahead of time. As late as Friday, the predictions were for 1 to 3 inches on Friday, and 6 to 8 inches on Sunday. As Sunday creeped closer, the predictions gradually increased, and weather concerns dominated the news.
Since about Saturday, the main story was about the upcoming snowfall, followed by Live Team Coverage of the snow as it is falling (this update from a different suburb: don't go out unless you have to; the Governor's state of emergency applies to you as well!), to Live Team Coverage of the snow clearing efforts. For the last four days, most of the news has been about how driving conditions are slowly improving, how schools are generally closed, how transit systems like Metro and VRE are not quite up to 100% yet, how the airports are closed or open with very reduced service, and so on.
I think there was some sort of global anti-war protest on Saturday. We didn't see much of it on the news; it wasn't important as some pretty white precipitation. Presumably we're still going to war with Iraq some time in mumble weeks, and the French still want peace at all costs.
None of that news has been as important as the worst snow storm this region has seen in seven years. At least it has provided a break from the 24x7 coverage of imminent carnage in the Persian Gulf. There's been a lot more talk about France, the UN and Iraq in the news today...
A letter to the editor of my hometown paper this weekend amused me greatly. It began by describing two young, intelligent women who'd moved to the area several months back and had suddenly decided to move away. (It's a moderately-small city.) Their reason was that all anyone ever talked about was the weather.
There's been a trend lately for the weather coverage on the evening news to drone on and on, with teasers beforehand and recaps afterward. It wouldn't surprise me if there were three or four minutes per broadcast devoted to saying Here's the tempishure and here's what we think will happen in the next several days. (Being a "meterologist" means never having to pronounce difficult weather-related words correctly.)
In the absence of interesting news, I guess local stations will compete on rather more boring terms....
Re:Weather Coverage
ziggy on 2003-02-20T23:39:06
Beefing up weather coverage is a good way to fill out a 22-minute (er, half hour) local newscast. There will always be something to say, it'll have pretty graphics, and a telegenic presenter. It also de-emphasizes the need to find titilating stories to fill a newscast (the if it bleeds, it leads syndrome).In the absence of interesting news, I guess local stations will compete on rather more boring terms....Also, you can count on weather to fill up a decent portion of a program when local news expands from 30 minutes to 90 or even 150 minutes.
:-S Re:Weather Coverage
delegatrix on 2003-02-21T01:44:55
A recent feature in the Washington Post claimed that people turn to local news casts largely for weather information and that's why weather teams have been so pumped up in the past few years.
