We live in an age of forgetting.
weather
Storm Warning \ Watch \ Pondering
Feb 8th
I still get confused over what’s worse: a storm warning or a storm watch. Usually, watch signals more immediacy than warn. If a car is about to hit your friend, you wouldn’t say “Beware the incoming car,” you’d say “Watch out for that car!” You watch things that are going on in the present, like watching a TV show, and give warnings about things that may happen (“Stomp your feet one more time and I’ll…)
But that’s not how they roll in storm school. A storm warning is more serious than a storm watch. Watch is used to mean “keep an eye out for”, like a guard on the night watch. And warning, as far as I can tell, in storm talk means “You’re about to get fucked.”
By the way, a winter storm warning was just issued for D.C.
I think we need clearer storm warnings. Instead of “storm watch, ” if a storm may hit but we’re not positive it will, it should be “smells like a storm”. Instead of “storm warning”, if a storm will hit but hasn’t hit yet, it should be a “storm a-coming.” And both notices should always be delivered by an unflappable elderly farmer in overalls called Old Pete.
“Hey, Pete. What’s the weather look like tomorrow? Smells like a storm?”
“Oh, I’d say it’s more than a smell. Storm’s a-coming, you can bet your hat on it, I say.”
I’d certainly trust a weather forecaster named Old Pete more than some named Topper Shutt. What the hell’s a Topper? On another note, how soon is it before the D.C. area goes completely ape shit over the amount of snow we’re getting? Overall, people have handled the weather well,
Pancake City Snow News
Feb 5th
Movieless Family Forced To Talk To Each Other
My roommate said the line at Blockbuster was to the end of the store.
Snow!
Feb 4th
- Went to Giant around 3:00 p.m. today. Lines five carts deep. The checker, beyond the point of caring, told me “I hope we run out of food.”
- Any way we can all agree to call the snowstorm, “Weekend at Bernie’s II”?
- NPR said the reason we’re having so much snow this season is because of El Nino. When will NPR stop blaming the Mexicans for everything?
D.C. School Closing Update
Dec 19th
University of MD, College Park: Closed Saturday and Sunday,
Georgetown University: Closed Saturday and Sunday.
Drextel Community College and Technical Center: Fuck it, we’re open.
Okay, that didn’t happen, but I wish there were one college willing to buck the curve.
Snowstorm drinking game: Turn on the local news, and take a shot every time you see a newscaster you have never seen on the air before. Warning: you will get drunk in 5 minutes.
D.C., I Apologize
Dec 18th
I made fun of how the news media in D.C. tends to over-react to inclement weather, including wind. I take it back. We’re getting a foot of snow over the weekend, a very large snowstorm for us. As of 9:35 a.m. today, the buildings in the city, at least the ones I can see from my window, have not been set aflame by a panicked mob decrying the end of days.
As of 9:35 a.m. today, the mention of a snow storm isn’t even on the front page of the Washington Post web site. Snow storms are hit candy for web sites, and the Washington Post has yet to pick up the pipe. I picture a room of Metro editors and rooms, sitting cross-legged with their eyes closed, palms facing up and resting on their knees. “Ohmmmm…snow will come, snow will pass…ohmmmmmm.”
I flipped on the T.V., and the Channel 7 weatherman was giving the forecast in the most calm and serene voice you can imagine, like a parent telling a child there are no monsters and you can go back to sleep.
Which makes me wonder: WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON?!! This isn’t the D.C. I know. IT’S TIME TO PANIC, BITCHES!!!
All this calmness is making me crazy. I need my news media to react like frenzied loons. It lets me know the world is operating as it always does, and that makes me relaxed. With all this lack of panic, I’m starting to panic.
I’m going grocery shopping today. I already have my milk and T.P., but I need to see a frenzied crowd right now. I pray that the lines are long, and the people worried. I need to calm down.
Standard of Living
Dec 11th
There are many ways to measure a country’s standard of living. Life span. Poverty rate. Education level. GDP.
Here’s my measure of a country’s standard of living. If you live in a place where the weather forecasters spend five minutes breathlessly warning people that it’s going to be windy tomorrow, things are going pretty well for you.
For one, you’re not suffering from a tornado, hurricane, drought, tsunami, or plague of locusts. There’s not even snow on the horizon. Your biggest problem is moving air caused by the uneven heating of the Earth’s surface.
D.C. must be the land of plenty, because the big weather story yesterday was that there would be gusts of wind the next day of up to 15-20 miles per hour.
While I find it amazing that we have the ability to predict wind, unless you are a homeless person watching the weather from a department store window, this is what I call BWN–Bullshit Weather News. There’s a lot of BWN in D.C. We are not a hearty folk. We get inclement weather but not enough to get accustomed to it, unlike Buffalo or Chicago. Hurricanes almost never hit us, but they usually come close enough to inspire talk for a few days. And it’s a four-season town. By the time we get adjusted to the surprises and vagaries of one season, the next season comes along.
Other D.C. BWN: less than 3 inches of snow, most of our “droughts,” and rainstorms that last more than two days, often right after our droughts. Do you have BWN where you live?
Winter Blues
Dec 5th
I find it funny that Seasonal Affective Disorder is abbreviated SAD. It’s almost like an LOL cat caption.
Names are important. I think depression would be easier to deal with if it were called “the grumpies.” “I have the grumpies today. Wait. Already feeling better. Forgot I like to say grumpies.”
And pills for depression should have sillier names, like “Snicker Doodles” and “Moogies.” How do you expect to get better if you’re taking a pill with as depressing of a name as Prozac?
I don’t know if the name Seasonal Affective Disorder means much, but when I first heard it, I thought “Oh, other people get sad during the winter too. It’s a Thing.” And there was some comfort in that.
It also made me more self-aware of how the weather affects my mood, a little more each year. The weather in D.C. has turned cold and gray, and I already notice myself skipping social events and wanting to stay inside all day. And I’m glad I’m noticing that. At worst, I can remind myself that what I’m feeling is just temporary and will get better in the spring. At best, I can force myself to do things I usually avoid in the winter but are good for me, like exercising and going out of the house.
So…how much is your mood affected by the seasons? Do you do anything in the winter to make it more fun?
Weather Forecast
Jul 25th
When the extended weather forecast shows a storm cloud for the next seven days, it makes me think they just gave up. “Screw it, it’s Friday afternoon. Copy and paste the rain cloud and let’s get out of here.”
It’s like they got tired of people asking them to predict the weather so far in the future. “You want to know what the weather will be next Friday? I got your weather report: nothing but misery and unhappiness as far as the eye can see. Now get out of here!”
(Update): This is what the 10-day forecast for Washington D.C. looks like.
Hurricane “Gustav”?
Aug 29th
What’s Hurricane Gustav going to do, hit landfall and then eat everyone’s chocolates?
Hurricane Season
Aug 24th
Tropical depression is an appropriate name. Hurricanes are always getting downgraded to tropical depressions. That is depressing. You’re at the height of your destructive career. You’re going places. People are paying attention. Then you get the call from Channel 7s’ Doug Hill: “Sorry, kid. You just don’t have it anymore. Next up: sports!”
If a storm got upgraded to a tropical depression, forecasters wouldn’t even be able to call it a tropical depression. It would be a Tropical Going Somewhere.
Happy New Year
Jan 2nd
Putting an exclamation point at the end would be emotional lying as I ended up going to bed at 11:30 p.m. on the 31th. Yes, I am an old man. I can’t wait for Andy Rooney on 60 Minutes.
I went to Florida for a week with Mom and Tina. We mostly stayed at the beach, and had a relaxing time. Global warming though has taken away the cache of vacationing to a warm climate.
I live in Washington D.C., an area that, up until a few years ago, had a potent combination of unpredictable winter weather and neurotic, fear-spongy residents. The local news stations are experts at whipping up weather-related fear. One of their tools is promotional ads for their respective station’s “Storm Center”.
The ads start off with a gruesome collection of winter images. People trudging to work through wind-whipped snow. Cars stacked on top of each other. Babies floating down the Potomac. An announcer utters with immense gravity: “Washington. Under Siege”. Or: “Winter Warning: Is the Snow-Nado Back?”
Oh, no! What do we do? The announcer’s voices softens: “Tune in to Channel 5, the only local channel with the Channel 5 Snow Patrol Doppler 5000 Protection League! Of Justice.” Whew.
Then Channel 7 airs their promo, except they have the Doppler 7000. Wow, that’s 2,000 more Doppler! And Channel 9 has the Doppler 9000, and Channel 13 has the Doppler 13000, and…wait a minute. Those Doppler douche-bags.
Anyway, the weather has been so mild this season that it has derailed most of the usual weather hysteria. I wish the unseasonable weather was a fluke, but as the Bush administration has stated, the warming trend over the past several years is real, and is caused, we know now, by what the scientific community calls “Angry Monkeys in Outer Space”.
These angry monkeys have made the last few winters in D.C. almost devoid of snow and forced local news stations to lower their promo airing standards from “Threat of Flurries” to “Brr! It’s cloudy outside.” (Seriously. They occasionally can’t help to air one of the promos, but the announcer has a tint of shame to his speech, like a co-worker the next day after he crapped his pants at the office holiday party.)
Back to my point. Thanks to angry space monkeys, vacationing to a warm climate in the winter barely earns a quiver of jealously anymore. This is a typical conversation I had with my friends when I got home:
ME: “How was your Christmas?”
FRIEND: “I’m Jewish.”
ME: “That’s good to hear. Guess what! I was in Florida!”
FRIEND: “That’s nice.”
ME: “Yup. 70 degrees weather the whole time. What was the weather like here?”
FRIEND: “60 degrees the whole time.”
ME: “Oh.”
FRIEND: “Yeah, we had another warm front.”
ME: “Well, it was so warm in Florida that I could wear shorts at night.”
FRIEND: “Lucky. I had to switch to pants after 8:00 p.m.”
There’s no way to make people jealous anymore with a winter trip. Where am I going to fly to now to make people jealous? Outer space? Not without a food-fitted Gatling gun and a box full of bananas. Besides, I would probably just have this conversation:
ME: “Guess what! I went to the Sun!”
FRIEND: “That’s nice.”
ME: “Yup. 6,000 Kelvin the whole time.”
FRIEND: “4,000 Kelvin here.”
ME: “Oh.”
FRIEND: “Yeah, we had another hole in the ozone layer.”
ME: “Well, it was so warm on he Sun that I was vaporized instantly into hydrogen.”
FRIEND: “Lucky. I had to be a semi-liquid after 10 p.m.”
Earth Global Warming Causes Hurricane-Like Storm on Saturn
Nov 11th
I’m joking about the Earth global warming connection, but this is neat.
Hurricanes
Oct 31st
There has been so many hurricanes this year—a record 22 of them named—that the Naming Gods have run out of pre-determined names. They are finally able to show their creativity, although they have created a bit of a commotion with their last two choices, Hurricane Asskicka and Hurricane Bitchslap.
If we were only so lucky. The dorks at the weather department are marking his momentous occasion by turning to the Greek alphabet, giving us Hurricanes Alpha and Beta.
You know what I call that? Hurricane Crap. This may be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be free of the hurricane naming rules, and they’re squandering it. They can name these hurricanes whatever they want, and we’d have no clue that they were coming up with these names on a cocktail napkin in a bar.
Almost any name is better than Alpha and Beta:
Hurricane Zeus
Hurricane God Hates You
Hurricane Shmiricane
Hurricane…of Love
If we are unfortunate enough to reach the letter D, they can at least calm people’s fears by calling it Hurricane Dude. “Hurricane Dude is still over the Florida Keys. It has been squatting there for a record two weeks. Strangely, the hurricane is only active between 2 p.m. and 2 a.m., and just gives off a faintly unpleasant odor the rest of the day.”
Hurricane Katrina
Aug 28th
Have you read the damage predictions from the National Weather Service for Hurricane Katrina? It reads like a prophecy out of the Bible.
AIRBORNE DEBRIS WILL BE WIDESPREAD...AND MAY INCLUDE HEAVY ITEMS SUCHAS HOUSEHOLD APPLIANCES AND EVEN LIGHT VEHICLES. SPORT UTILITYVEHICLES AND LIGHT TRUCKS WILL BE MOVED. THE BLOWN DEBRIS WILL CREATEADDITIONAL DESTRUCTION. PERSONS...PETS...AND LIVESTOCK EXPOSED TO THEWINDS WILL FACE CERTAIN DEATH IF STRUCK.
POWER OUTAGES WILL LAST FOR WEEKS...AS MOST POWER POLES WILL BE DOWNAND TRANSFORMERS DESTROYED. WATER SHORTAGES WILL MAKE HUMAN SUFFERINGINCREDIBLE BY MODERN STANDARDS.
THE VAST MAJORITY OF NATIVE TREES WILL BE SNAPPED OR UPROOTED. ONLYTHE HEARTIEST WILL REMAIN STANDING...BUT BE TOTALLY DEFOLIATED. FEWCROPS WILL REMAIN. LIVESTOCK LEFT EXPOSED TO THE WINDS WILL BEKILLED.
It’s hard for me to grasp that, a day from now, New Orleans may no longer exist. The loss of a city is something that happens in other countries, other times. It is a story line for a science fiction movie, not reality. And perhaps that’s part of the reason the city’s storm levees were never heightened, in spite of experts’ predictions that this event would one day occur. What other things are we not preparing for, in both our own lives and as a civilization, because the events seem too horrible to happen?
The AC
Nov 5th
I’ve been feeling sluggish recently. There’s little ventilation in my room, and the heat has been making me feel–
IT’S FRIGGING NOVEMBER! WHY IS IT 75 DEGREES IN NOVEMBER? I DON’T CARE IF YOU CAN GO SWIMMING OUTSIDE, SOMETHING IS WRONG. WE’RE ABOUT TO DIE OF GLOBAL WARMING AND THE SCIENTISTS ARE LETTING US ENJOY THE WEATHER. WE NEED TO ACT, LIKE, I DON’T KNOW, FIRE MISSILES AT MALAYASIA. THEY’LL NEVER EXPECT IT.
–a bit odd.
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