About 4:45, we were all minding our own business when the local tornado sirens started blowing. This seemed odd, since our weather radio hadn’t gone off (turns out it was unplugged; oops!) We turned on the TV to find that the NWS geniuses had called away a tornado warning for Wood County until 7:05pm– about two hours longer than a typical warning. Of the five local stations, none of them were doing a good, Huntsville-quality job of coverage. The WB and UPN affiliates were continuing their normal programming; NBC had their weatherman on a phone link (with a static mugshot– gee, that tells me a lot about the weather); CBS and ABC both had their radars on line. However, the storm was well to the south and east of us. Wood County covers 617 square miles, so I guess I can understand firing a warning when there’s no storm activity near the northern third, but it was still kinda funny to contrast the high-coverage (and generally well-done) tornado coverage in Huntsville to what passes for TV weather here in Toledoland. One common thread: they both lie like dogs about snow.
Update: I was flat-out wrong. Turns out that the storm system we were being warned about was deadly. I still like what Ambrose Bierce said about weather forecasters, though:
Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see,
And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be —
Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth,
With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth.
While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incadescent youth,
From the coals that he’d preferred to the advantages of truth.
He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote
On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote —
For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow:
“Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow.”
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