Aftermath of the 'Storm'

Well Washington has managed to survive it's very first snowstorm of the season (if 2 inches of snow and a quarter inch of ice on top of it can count as a snowstorm). Now it seems that just as I predicted, President Obama had some sarcastic comments about how the area deals with snow and though it has rubbed some people the wrong way I realized that it was still telling to see how people from parts of the country where there is lots of snow deal with it and how we here in Washington choose to deal with it. One can argue that we tend to overreact in the area to ice and snow but it's not surprising given the way the media reacts to it.

You can usually tell how severely the area is going to be perceiving the storms when you see the way in which the media covers it. When they have people all over the area giving live reports in winter coats and hats as they scan the skies even before flakes start falling. They'll have namebrand jackets and gloves and will usually be armed with a yard stick (to measure the snow depth) or a shovel (to illustrate how deadly the situation is). There will be endless news segments showing sliding cars and accidents galore. There will be interviews with people on the street as they struggle up and down the sidewalks either getting to work or getting a car-full of groceries needed to 'survive' the storm. Sure we get snowstorms in the area that impact us by leaving us stranded in our houses for a few days but in this day and age, it's not like we are settlers heading out west left to survive on our own.

I agree that there is some cautionary wisdom that can be taken from the stories of people freezing to death in their houses due to power failures are worth knowing and learning from but do we really need endless stories about how bad things are and how bad things can potentially get? Some in the media argue that it is there duty to report on the worst possible scenarios so that people can be properly prepared for the possible problems but it doesn't mean that we need to scare people as if the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse will be riding in ahead of the storms that they predict. I can recall times where we had hype for days ahead of time and then ended up with weather that could be termed as balmy. Though the rest of the country has dealt with snow we have been relatively free of any problems this entire winter and several winters past.

Still, even then we can't be pleased all of the time. If you listen to the news you'll always see both sides of the issue and neither side ever appears to be wrong. What do I mean? Well take for example schools. School districts always have a tough job in that they have to make decisions at around 2:00 in the morning so that word can be properly spread to ensure that people know by 5:00 AM whether their particular school districts are closed. Sometimes they try the trick of delaying start by a few hours and then making a decision later in the day but if snow starts falling big time after the delay then it's usually too late to do anything. If they keep schools open the media will show endless clips of parents complaining about making kids go out in the snow and if they close then parents are shown criticizing the school board for making the decision to close when the weather wasn't really that bad. It just ends up showing that we're all indecisive when it comes to our winter weather in the Washington Metro area.