Weather Reporting Continues to Piss Me Off

[bjarvis]

*Rant mode on*

I was reading a report on Beryl moving along the US east coast a few minutes ago.

Looking at the map to the upper left, it strikes me that the big news of this article should be that this storm is going hit Nova Scotia full-on. Instead, the article is all about Beryl being a non-event on the US eastern seaboard. WTF?!

I admit it: I've always been really annoyed at schizoid TV weather forecasts that clearly show satellite photos of all of Canada & the US to indicate ugliness crossing the border, but then reduce their tactical diagrams to the US only, showing blackness where Canada sits. Do they think a blizzard system moving south from the Canadian prairies simply materializes out of nothingness at the US-Canada border? Do they think that just because a storm or flood crest moves north of the contiguous 48 that it no longer exists?

Weather doesn't follow nice, convenient international borders or boundaries. Meteorologists better than most know that these are systems which are influenced by broad areas of the planet. Where does this bury-our-head-in-the-sand reporting come from?

*Rant mode off.*
*Well, OK, rant mode reduced somewhat.*

Comments

[bjarvis.livejournal.com]

But you'd think that residents of border states would be *very* interested in whatever weather is happening a few miles away since it will be their own weather the following day.

On a smaller scale, DC weather tends to come from Virginia & West Virginia. I doubt we'd accept the three day forecast on faith alone if the local TV news couldn't be bothered to show what's happening to the west of us.

[pectopah.livejournal.com]

Border states are very interested. In Vermont, they give the weather for all of Vermont and adjacent Quebec, NH, MA and NY. We listen to NPR in Montreal (but can't get the CBC in Vermont). In Canada, we also get the wait times to cross the US border on busy days. Weather reporting in our part of Canada tends to be either quite local and detailed or province-wide and general.

I think part of the reason for the lack of coverage about Beryl hitting NS is that all of the Canadian reporting I saw said that Beryl wouldn't hit NS directly, but that there would be heavy showers. Given the chaos/anger over how Ottawa is handling the evacuation from Beirut, Beryl, as an essentially non-event, only got coverage briefly during the weather.