Storm's Over, Start Digging

Expert, and we use that term loosely, meteorologists finally got it right. Between the Doppler system, NOAA, and other systems used to predict the weather, they hype-ageddoned this storm to ridiculous proportions but finally hit the nail on the head. Each time they over-hype a storm, making it the news story of the day, and it fails to materialize, it not only hurts their credibility. The public begins to experience the "crying wolf" syndrome and ignores the next warning. Their catch-all after that is, "Better to be safe than sorry."

It's funny, growing up we relied on a thermometer to tell us it was cold outside, or our parents telling us to wear a jacket. Plus, growing up also taught you a few things. One was, when it was winter, you needed a jacket. If it was raining you used a raincoat or grabbed an umbrella. Common sense seemed to be just as valuable then as it is now. But we seem to rely less on common sense now than ever before.

The other interesting thing is the need for all of the news reporters to stand in the storm/blizzard/flood as though that will make their reporting more authentic or dramatic. Doubtful. We watched a YouTube video of a reporter doing her thing in either a hurricane or some other event with high winds when she is struck and knocked off camera by a flying Stop sign (visible during a slow motion replay). She never saw it coming. Another crazy aspect of this reporting is the constant interviewing of people out during the storm. What are they expecting these people to say? "I came out to experience this because I'm an idiot."

Now that the sun is shining, the temperatures are rising and we'll soon begin to dig out, the reporters will be showing us cars buried under snow, roofs that have collapsed and in coastal areas, flooding. We have a flooding problem in Greenburgh thanks to micro-over development of every parcel of land that's vacant. Thankfully, though, there was no flooding in Greenburgh during this storm. But, there's always another one on its way with leaders who would rather get media coverage of it than help the residents by fixing it. Stay safe while you recover from this storm.