"Let it Snow, Let it Snow" .. and the Google That Cried "Wolf"
 

It's snowing outside. Nothing exciting ... about half an inch ... and it's going to go well above freezing today to melt it all off. Schools are closed, as they usually are around here when so much as one single white flake is seen on the top of a nearby mountain. So, it promises to be a quiet, pretty day . . . (Yeah, I live in a pretty southern but not-too southern US latitude, and there's a reason for that.)

Except for the "Google emergency alerts" that are coming in on my phone (I can't figure out how to stop them ...), and the two automated calls I have received so far from "county emergency management services," all warning me that it might snow today. (OMG ...)

And then, on various social nets that my wife frequents, that was all that anyone could seem to talk about. I didn't go to the grocery store yesterday because I knew I'd be standing in line for an hour to buy a dozen eggs. I'll just eat cereal for breakfast today.

In other words, everyone and everything is "crying 'Wolf'" about half-an-inch of white precipitation, as though we were facing some incredible blizzard. The US Weather Service has generated a "hazardous weather conditions" warning, as they properly should, and now a bunch of automated systems are dutifully spreading the word ... but in the most extreme manner possible, (presumably) so that no one will face a lawsuit from someone if Little Johnny's Cat slips and falls. All of these automated systems are "crying 'Wolf!'."

We need to get control of this. And, to stop spending billions of Government dollars on this. This is, as with all things, "a question of balance," and the "balance" has been lost.

The world is mad, you can find some madness in almost everything in the world. Oh and money that is the worse of all the madness.

Cheers

Every time it rains in Southern California, people there forget how to drive.

We got > 12" of show in Ohio last week and I barely noticed.
But when the Weather Channel "predicts" a gross amount of impending snow (says over 5" overnight) I generally start checking the cupboards for sufficient supplies.

The same thing happened in Vancouver! The forecast was for a snowstorm this Sunday or Monday, and it didn't snow.

you know there is a good reason that the telephone and electrical pols in the upper peninsula of Michigan
are painted RED

yes the tops of the poles

so you can see where the road WAS under the 8 ft of snow

It's all relative really, at least you're not on fire like quite a few areas of Australia are. You have somewhere to go to, once the house has burned down and everything around you is also gone there is no where to go for immediate shelter.

Here, I think, the essential problem is that the whole response was automatic. The National Weather Service issued a certain kind of (fairly routine) warning for an area ... and ... all the "Fire! Fire!!" alarms all went off at once. Thereby creating an entirely-unjustifiable response that, if it happens too many times (and I am quite sure that it will), will serve to de-sensitize people to what, in the future, could well be an important announcement. Just like "the boy who cried 'Wolf!'." Just like that.

Furthermore, it's obvious that a lot of effort, and therefore "guv'mint money," went into setting all this stuff up. Yet there obviously is no human at the top of it, and, most likely, no one who actually lives in the area and therefore knows it best. Without that human element, and without restraint in the usage of it, the upshot could easily be "more harm than good."

What gets me is the "bread and milk" thing. One of our local TV stations has actually started, quite tongue in cheek, a "bread and milk" index.

When snow is predicted, even in a major metropolitan area in the generally temperate mid-Atlantic states, people start acting as if they lived in the third igloo to the left 12 miles outside of Nome, Alaska, and buy up all the bread and milk in sight, even though no one lives outside of walking distance from a 7-11 and all the main roads are guaranteed to be passable in a day or two.

Humans is the craziest people.