02.02.11
On The Use Of Epic Words For Storms
Snowmageddon. Snowpocalypse. The Storm of the Century.
It seems like just about every snowstorm in the past year or so has been described in epic proportions, provided that it 1) has affected more than a couple of states, 2) has produced at least a few inches of snow, and 3) has occurred east of the Mississippi.
While some aspects of these storms may have been unprecedented in one way or another, I do not believe that such words should be used to describe every storm.
If we call every snowstorm “epic”, or always use such words to describe a storm, we lose some credibility and may not be able to adequately convey when a storm really is “epic”.
Any snowstorm can be dangerous and life-threatening, and snowstorms happen every year. Blizzards resulting in several foot snow drifts happen every year (granted, not always in highly-populated areas, but they do happen). If we hype up every ordinary snowstorm, some people may eventually stop paying attention to warnings when they need to.
They may say “oh, I made it through that one snowpocalypse just fine, so why should I prepare or stay home for this one?” This is part of why the media then proceeds to take up using even grander terms, to describe another blizzard that was not much different from the last one.
Then when a storm sets up that could truly be called “the storm of the century”, we may not be left with great enough words to describe it in a way that people will heed warnings, prepare, and stay home.
The National Weather Service and the media has used some pretty strong words to warn people of this recent/ongoing winter storm from Dallas to Boston. The National Weather Service in Norman (as well as some of the media outlets) claimed that the blizzard could produce similar results in Oklahoma to those from the Christmas Eve ’09 blizzard.
How did people react to these warnings?
While many people participated in panic buying over the weekend, hundreds of people became stuck on roads in northeastern Oklahoma on Tuesday. Why did the people who were out and about in the snow not stay home? The Christmas Eve ’09 blizzard left hundreds of cars stuck in the snow as well, and it was recent enough to where it should have easily been remembered. Did they not believe the warnings? Did they think that they were invincible? On a side note, what was so important that they “had” to be on the roads…schools were all closed and many, if not most, businesses were shut down as well…there seemed to be an awful lot of non-essential travel going on.
Whatever the reason for people driving in the blizzard, I somehow doubt that there would have been fewer people on the roads had this storm been called the storm of the millennium.
Chuck Doswell recently posted on a similar subject in his blog: “How much warning of danger is too much?”