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

[cuyahogarvr.livejournal.com]

Beryl??? Storm??? East Coast??? What are you talking about??? See, those of us buried in the Midwest also have blinders placed on us by our weather flunkies. If it weren't for family members/friends located on the coast (Charleston, DC, New Jersey), we would have no clue about the weather in other parts of the country. What's more important is having people in western Ohio and Michigan who call and tell us what type of weather to expect in the next 24 hours. They are much more valuable to us than any of our weather people.


Speaking of Canada - you know that great big extension of our land mass just the other side of "our" lake, the only time it ever appears on our weather screens is when one of those lovely Alberta Clippers comes barrelling down the pike. Then its "Canadian Shield this" and "Arctic Mass that". You'd think the country only affected our weather in Winter.