Confessions of a Weather Nut
In our house cable watching is balanced - Someone watches many things; I watch one thing. Yes, I am one of the scewballs that could spend hours watching the Weather Channel, the MTV for the middle aged.
In hindsight, I would have made a good meteorologist. I still have my first purchased book from grade school, ‘Hurricanes and Twisters”. While other boys were reading thrillers (or playing sports) I was trying to understand these monsters of wind. Weather is not only interesting, but thrilling. I monitor the passing of fronts, seasons, winds, and patterns in the seasons.
I blame Sonny Eliot, the channel 4 weather man of my youth. He was far more intriguing and entertaining than the anchormen or the sportsman.
Or maybe it is my mother’s fault. Unlike other moms who would fret or run to the basement during a bad storm, she found them entertaining. Mother and Mother Nature providing a free spectacle of thunder and mayhem. Storms were the best and they could not be big enough. Snow or rain, did not matter, so long as it was intense.
Cynics suggest that voyeurs of bad weather do so with schadenfreude and relief that it is not happening to them. I think there is more; a archaic need to be thrilled and in touch with something still beyond human control. People need excitement and to be scared/thrilled, or are all those horror movies merely a mistake?
As they say on Hee-Haw, ‘salute!” to the Weather Channel, for the winter storms and the spring tornados and the high holy days of the hurricane season. May they continue to bring the unavoidable, the unpredictable and the unalterable. (and storm reports on the 50 minute of each hour).
In hindsight, I would have made a good meteorologist. I still have my first purchased book from grade school, ‘Hurricanes and Twisters”. While other boys were reading thrillers (or playing sports) I was trying to understand these monsters of wind. Weather is not only interesting, but thrilling. I monitor the passing of fronts, seasons, winds, and patterns in the seasons.
I blame Sonny Eliot, the channel 4 weather man of my youth. He was far more intriguing and entertaining than the anchormen or the sportsman.
Or maybe it is my mother’s fault. Unlike other moms who would fret or run to the basement during a bad storm, she found them entertaining. Mother and Mother Nature providing a free spectacle of thunder and mayhem. Storms were the best and they could not be big enough. Snow or rain, did not matter, so long as it was intense.
Cynics suggest that voyeurs of bad weather do so with schadenfreude and relief that it is not happening to them. I think there is more; a archaic need to be thrilled and in touch with something still beyond human control. People need excitement and to be scared/thrilled, or are all those horror movies merely a mistake?
As they say on Hee-Haw, ‘salute!” to the Weather Channel, for the winter storms and the spring tornados and the high holy days of the hurricane season. May they continue to bring the unavoidable, the unpredictable and the unalterable. (and storm reports on the 50 minute of each hour).
posted by Ur-spo at 5:04 PM
1 Comments:
Much to Leon's chagrin, I too am a Weather Channel addict. I've loved weather since junior high. Also I think that both Jim Cantore and Mike Bettis are totally hot.
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