Comment by ShadowBanThis01
2 years ago
This should be useful for the ever-more-hyperbolic weather reports that dominate network news now.
NBC News, almost every week: "20 million Americans threatened by severe weather this weekend!"
"Bomb cyclone threatens 10 million people"
"Atmospheric river menacing 18 million people"
Translation: A rainy front is moving through several states.
I mean there is a different between 'getting some rain this weekend' and 'life threatening flooding'.
The atmospheric river post would be an example of the second headline and should still maintain the necessary urgency and implied danger.
There is indeed a difference, but you wouldn't know it from listening to these breathless announcements every night.
What I hate about these particular (nearly verbatim) examples is the summing of the entire population of every state that might be touched by a system and barfing it out as if it's a body count.
And why all of a sudden does every weather phenomenon (or variant thereof) have a new sensational name?
And on a California-centric tangent: I also detest meaningless labels, which CA loves. For example, there's a RED FLAG WARNING! WTF is that supposed to mean? Are millions of people threatened by red flags? OH NOES!
And finally there's "sigalert." Insert giant eye-roll emoji.