Does TWC Hype the Weather? You be the judge... Twisters in NC AGAIN... EF3 this time..

This has to be one of the strangest images on radar I have seen for a Twister ... it looked like the storm had an eye and if I hadn't known what was going on I would have thought some small hurricane had moved inland around the Outer Banks and kept going..

Is that odd or what? TWC tweeted the radar image... seems they thought it was weird too!!

I can't believe I'm writing two stories back to back on The Weather Channel. But, first let me speak about that EF3 Tornado that broke the dry spell that had been the longest in 3 years... gone, whoosh on a Friday afternoon when once again twisters targeted Eastern North Carolina and this time... it was an EF3.

This is the third time in the last several weeks that the area more known for hurricanes has been under the gun for tornadoes.

In Kansas, Iowa and Oklahoma if the weather gets funny the locals know something might be happening fast in real time. They are weather aware when it comes to their own most common weather. In North Carolina if you heard they were talking about the possibility for tornadoes... you might think they are hyping the weather. If the tornado hits your town you know they were not HYPING the weather, but trying to warn you. Yes, ratings are nice... but the ratings spike is a bubble in the overall picture. They are doing what they are supposed to do ...they are giving a heads up on the nightly news.. on their weather app and probably on The Weather Channel. The NWS is out there doing the same thing. The question remains is anyone listening?

While you are fighting with Pandora or searching for a tune on YouTube or listening to your favorite, faraway country radio station did you know that a Tornado Watch had been issued in your area?

If this was your house... you would not think they were "hyping the weather"

The New York Times wrote an article last week, a short article, stating basically that TWC is in the business of hype. I imagine it was a small article not on the front page, because this was not exactly breaking news.

The WEATHER Channel is all about weather. It's like saying that ESPN is HYPING the start of the baseball season or the upcoming NFL Draft. Um... yeah....that is what we expect ESPN to do... talk about sports with enthusiasm. We don't want to Perry Como type announcers yawning while talking about the Super Bowl.  And, we all do expect TWC to hype what they are selling... which is weather.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/26/arts/television/nature-is-a-threat-in-tornado-alley-and-will-to-live.html?_r=0

The article goes on to say the following ...which to some extent I agree with in that after awhile a lot of the re-enacted episodes begin to all look the same. Luckily I own this thing called a remote control and when I am bored... I use it.

No it doesn't match the real thing and the real message they are trying to get out is that we are moving from Winter into Spring and the Tornado Season is upon us. And, last year they were the target of that very wild weather and am sure Mike Bettes doesn't think tornadoes bearing down on you while on the road are over hyped.

http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/after-suffering-symptons-of-ptsd-mike-bettes-is-back-for-tornado-week_b222465

Before showing the quote from the NY Times story I want to preface it with my comment that yes.. Stephen King has made a lot of money doing just that and he is considered one of the best suspense writers since Edgar Allen Poe. I don't hear them complaining that Stephen King is scaring the public into reading him making people afraid to go to bed for fear a dome will fall on top of their home ....

"you should be terrified at all times, of all sorts of things, not just the weather. But especially the weather."

Well... there sure are a lot of movies about weather and books about weather. It sure seems like people love talking about the weather enough ... and it sure seems like this Spring is going to be a double doozie with both tornadoes and floods so....as far as I'm concerned let's let TWC do what they do best and that is cover the weather.  That child in the above picture has had a wake up call he will never forget and am sure every time a thunderstorm builds over his house he is going to be searching for a funnel cloud. That is how much weather people get started in the business. That one hurricane.. that crazy snow storm, that random twister that hit up just the road somewhere.

Seems to be Hollywood hypes the weather..

and well novelists since before Shakespeare have written about the weather...

....never heard an English teacher complain about that neither... 

:)

The Tempest was a little heavy on the weather and disaster if you ask me...

Worked for Shakespeare.. will work for The Weather Channel.

Personally would rather see them hyping the weather than gardening, rock climbing & building skyscrapers...

AND...the Weather is going to be worth hyping this week as today's bad weather moves east...

That's weather worth hyping if you ask me... if it saves ONE LIFE... it's worth the hype..

Besos Bobbi

Ps.... Southbound for a while...going home to Florida... for a while... yay ...

let's call it a Spring Break from Spring and the pollen and a time to smell the tropical flowers..