Blizzicane 2010: The Stupid Post I wrote while as delirious as the newscasters.

As I write this, the New York City metro area is digging out from yet another massive snowstorm.  Central Park recorded over twenty inches of snow in the last day and a half. That is a lot of snow! Overall, the city and region have done fairly well, with public transportation getting back to normal service levels and most major roads plowed down to the blacktop within six hours of the end of the snowfall. Well done, states of New York and New Jersey. That's what happens when adequate levels of taxation and public spending are maintained. (Not that I mean to disrespect other metropolitan areas, such as our nation's capital city and surrounding states..)

That, however, is not the point of this post. My main amusement is the well-known hysterics into which the local TV newspeople throw themselves during every winter storm, this one being no exception. The local NBC affiliate has put aside their normal daytime programming for hour after hour of non-stop snowstorm coverage. The anchors and roving reporters are giddy with snow-induced fatigue; all normal restraints on their playful banter have been tossed into the snow pile. They swing schizophrenically between outrage at bureaucratic muck-ups (such as the current "truck-stucking", their words not mine, on a highway upstate covered with flair by Tim Minton, who has just on live TV described one inept driver as a "knucklehead"), to profound sadness at the man killed by a falling branch, to sympathy for business owners whose roofs have collapsed, to jubilation for the NYC school children enjoying their unexpected day off.
Adding to the whimsy, the white-girl news anchor literally "oh-no-he-didnt'ed", in a spirit of chummy urban camaraderie no doubt, at Janice Huff after fellow meteorologist John Marshall dared mention the possibility of more snow next week. (He and Janice will be fleeing to Bermuda to escape the wrath of the villagers, because as we know the weather is controlled by the TV meteorologists.) And, in another inspiring story, a reporter has just told us of his siting of a convoy of Orthodox Jews passing his perch near the highway. Apparently, Purim begins tomorrow, and those intrepid Jews just aren't going to let the snow stop their fun. So brave! Thank you for inspiring us all with that story, Mr. Reporter-man!

They've also wheeled out the cutesy names - Snow-cane, Hurrizard, Blizzicane - all owing to this storm's unusually hurricane-like spiral structure. It is all fair enough: they are being forced to fill 8 hours of news coverage with about 20 minutes worth of news story. I'd crack up, too. It is certainly amusing to watch, and I think sort of interesting to see how behavior norms change, for news people and everyone else, due to what is in this area a fairly common weather event. You don't see this sort of change in response to severe thunderstorms, not in the New York area, at least. I'd be interested to know if, in the Midwest and Great Plains, tornado season brings such sweeping changes to the local news landscape.  There is something not quite right about coming up with cutesy names for a destructive tornado (Whirly-Wind? Tornadothon? Cyclonageddon?), so I'm guessing any change is not in the direction of levity and laughter.

Nevermind, back to the Blizzicane for me. And, oh-no-he-didn't, the news anchor just called NY Governor David Paterson's current predicament a "storm, a political storm of sorts". Oh yes, he did.