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

[dr-scott.livejournal.com]

The majority of the population isn't interested in where weather comes from or capable of looking at a map to see weather systems moving in their direction. The tendency is to show the map focused on the area immediately surrounding the audience's area of interest so that you can give the finest detail, as text showing place names and temps and the like has to be a certain size to be visible. It wouldn't surprise me if local stations in an area full of Quebecois snowbirds pay some attention to weather in Lower Canadam for example. But ignorance compounds ignorance in a mass medium -- if most people don't care about X, mass media won't show X, and that reinforces the ignorance that leads to indifference. Weather may be a global phenomena, but how often do mass media show weather in Europe and Asia? Never, except on networks that have global viewership.