Call this one a snow job.
Look, I understand TV's obsessions with the weather. It's about ratings. We do the same thing. It's about selling newspapers, and attracting eyeballs to our website. That is, after all, the purpose of our front page every day, even if a lot of people won't admit it.
What I don't understand is, if you're going to treat the weather with the reverence and mania that TV news does every time some form of precipitation is in the forecast, shouldn't you get it right.
I mean, what other reason is there for "doppler" or "double-scan" radar. Is that like being on double-secret probation.
No one forecast what happened on Sunday. All I heard for days was that we were supposed to get a dusting of snow starting mid-afternoon, which would change to rain later in the day.
What we got was a nefarious winter wonderland that caught people off guard, leaving some people trapped on the roads for hours as conditions went south in a hurry.
I had dropped off my daughter for an early train as she headed back to D.C. about 8:30 and then headed to church. She was actually home for her cousin's wedding shower. Thank god it was Saturday and not Sunday.
I got home and fired up the laptop to check a few things, and that's when I first noticed a few flakes, just before noon.
What happened next was out of the blue - or perhaps better said out of that angry gray sky.
The next time I looked out the window, the ground was covered. Then the cars. Then the road in our development.
They put up a shot from Lincoln Financial Field and it appeared a blizzard was hitting the region. Eight inches of snow piled up on the field.
Travel quickly descended into some less than dicey, and more approaching downright dangerous.
Some areas in Delaware got as much as 10 inches.
Much to the surprise of "double-scan" radar.
The snow slammed the I-95 corridor, from Newark, Del., which might have gotten the worst of it, right through Philly.
And every one of the fancy weather computers missed it.
I will at least have to offer some kudos to John Bolaris. This morning in his Philly.com column, he basically admitted that he got the forecast wrong, and did not warn people of what was coming.
Last night I decided to clean off the cars and shovel the drieway. This morning, I still had to chip away a coating of ice that accumulated on the car. But once I got out of the driveway and development, it was a fairly normal commute into work, even if it was a little slower. I drove through a steady rain all the way in, but I did not detect the roads were especially slick.
Of course, the very first thing I heard when I flipped on the TV in my office was a local TV reporter telling us the roads in Delaware County were "treacherous."
Really? Where? That's not being wrong, that borders on a public disservice.
I'm sure this will not be my first rant about the way local TV handles the weather. Snow is in the forecast for tomorrow. Brace yourself for the hype.
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