Yesterday’s snow caught us unawares. We were forecast for a “dusting,” with maybe 1/2 inch accumulation. Nobody was taking it very seriously. Until about 9:30 yesterday morning, it started to snow. And didn’t stop. By 10:30, work was called off, and Russ and I set off in the car to make our way home. The trip, which usually takes 15-20 minutes (25, if there’s a LOT of traffic) was nearly two hours. But we were happy to arrive home safely.
Many people were not so fortunate. Some were stuck in traffic for hours, some never made it home at all and had to abandon their cars on the side of the highway, walking for miles to find shelter at hotels, motels, churches, wherever they could find a safe, warm place. (Hopefully nobody actually spent the night in their car, on the side of the road.) Some children couldn’t get out of their schools and had to spend the night there with their teachers. I hear some power is out in some places, but not too much, thankfully. We have power, and a good thing too, because the temperature outside this morning is 14 degrees.
No work today! We have been given the gift of time, a day off to catch up on the podcast, and putter around the house, looking for things to throw in the Goodwill box. I’ve got the front room mostly under control by this time, and hope to make some further progress later today.
The real problem with the weather in our area (Tuscaloosa/Birmingham) is that the weatherman never predicted it would be this bad. If this level of crippling weather had been predicted, schools and businesses would have been closed down yesterday before the day even got started, and we wouldn’t have had thousands of people out on the roads, trying to get home. There would have been HUNDREDS of less traffic accidents, and no kids would have had to spend the night at their school. I can only imagine how anxious those parents must feel, and this morning conditions still are not good enough to allow anyone back on the roads. Tuscaloosa is under a state of emergency, with all roads deemed “impassable,” and no one allowed out and about except emergency, health & safety personnel.
Okay for me and Russ. We can keep ourselves occupied at home—as I said, we’ve been given the gift of time. We’ll find out later today what the plan is for tomorrow.
But getting back to those erring weatherman, the station we usually watch for news, the one that prides itself on “accuracy” (with the slogan “Accuracy Matters,” I’ve talked about them before) really screwed up big time, don’t you think? On last night’s newscast, they kept talking about the horrible traffic conditions, but never got anywhere NEAR the topic of WHY any of this had to be so bad in the first place. Interestingly, we didn’t hear the phrase “Accuracy Matters” too many times last night either.
There’s another news station in town, the ABC affiliate, with a well-respected weatherman James Spann, who is the one everyone always turn to when tornadoes are headed our way. Yesterday he kept admitting that there had been a HUGE FORCAST ERROR (freely using the word “error”) and telling people, “Don’t blame the schools, don’t blame your boss, if you’ve got to blame anyone, blame me.”
I really respect his willingness to take responsibility for a poor forecast that caused so much trouble (although he was not the only weatherman to do so), and to admit that when predicting the weather, it’s sometimes next to impossible to be “accurate.” I’m so annoyed with our usual news station at this point, and Russ agrees with me, we might just be switching over to ABC in the mornings for our news and weather report.
I think if I hear that phrase “Accuracy Matters” one more time, I’m going to scream. You know, in TV News and Weather, (same as in life in general) it’s not the worst thing in the world to make a mistake now and then. But when you do make a mistake, own up to it and say you’re sorry. Is that too much to ask?
