The evening run of the weather models is in, and it looks like it's going to snow in a few days. The 10 o'clock news puts "Snow?" up on the Chyron and it's off to the races. Within seconds Facebook lights up with questions from all walks of life for the local weathermen.
"When is it going to hit!?"
"IS SCHL CANCULLD I DONT WANNA GO 2 SKL 2MRW PLZ THXXXXXXX XOXO"
"Exactly how much snow will fall on 14th street between 2 and 6 AM I need to know this is important please reply."
"IS IT GUNA SNOW"
"This is bullshit they're lying weathermen are never right I'll believe it when I see it."
"It's going to be HUGE! The models are underestimating it! IT'S THE BIG DADDY!"
On and on and on. The morning runs come in and they still show a storm, but now the models are disagreeing on what it will do. One shows a direct hit, one shows a glancing blow, and the other shows a complete miss. Two news stations are forecasting a big hit for the city, while the other two news stations are saying that it's a 50/50 possibility. The weather weenies on Facebook and Twitter are lighting up with their endless expertise -- these middle/high schoolers think they know everything because they read something on the internet that clearly imparts more knowledge than years of college meteorology courses could ever hope to accomplish. They fall victim to something called wishcasting, or skewing weather model output, regardless of what it actually shows, towards a big snowstorm because you really wish it would snow.
The average person is now bombarded with all of these dissonant forecasts. In a 10 minute period it's possible to hear that it's going to be a historic blizzard, it'll miss us, it'll drop a few inches of snow, it'll be all ice, it'll just rain, and it's too early to tell what will happen.
Human nature drives us towards caution, or in this case panic. When presented with two different ideas, we tend to believe the one that'll create the most death and destruction because we don't want to be caught off-guard. When presented with a forecast that calls for an epic blizzard or one that calls for just a few inches of fluffy snow, people (for various reasons) will want to believe that the epic blizzard is coming.
The biggest reason for people absolutely losing their shit over snow is because you can't really drive in it after a few inches of accumulation. It's damn near impossible in places like the Washington DC metro area or just about anywhere really, even in a big SUV with 4 wheel drive. If you can't drive in the snow, you can't get to work. That can be a big problem if you have to go to work. People who have to drive in snow don't like being told that it's not a big deal. I get that. But feeding into the panic complex doesn't clear up the roads. It's winter. You live in a place where it snows on occasion. It shouldn't be that big of a shock. Really.
One of the other big criticisms I hear during snowstorms is the tough decision school systems have to make. In the last decade or so school systems have taken to preemptively closing (or delaying) school so that parents, students, and employees don't have to scramble to change their plans at the last minute.
I grew up in
Prince William County, Virginia (in Woodbridge if you're familiar with the area), which is the second largest school district in Virginia. It's a long county that stretches from the Potomac River in the east to the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in the west. In almost every snowstorm there's a part of the county that gets slammed while the other part comes out relatively unscathed. This leads to the inevitable outrage when the county closes, delays, or leaves schools open during a storm.
Yeah, the roads are just wet and it's sunny where you are, but the world isn't you-centric. Teachers drive in every morning from 50 miles all around to teach your kids. Students on one half of the county get bused clear across to the other side to go to specialty schools. Bus drivers have to get to the lots at 5AM to get their buses ready for their morning routes. Custodians and administrators need to get to the schools to get them ready for the day.
More often than not, they close the schools because it was nastier at 4AM than it was at 9AM when you strolled out of bed bathed in the morning sun and onto the internet to send hate Tweets.
There's also the problem of students who are on the free lunch program. As I wrote during the run-up to Hurricane Sandy, many of the students on these programs rely on their free lunch in school as their only adequate meal of the day. If the schools close, they lose that meal. That's a big deal.
And then there are some other issues that often get overlooked. Power outages are expected if trees fall onto power lines, or if some idiot tells his buddy to hold his beer while he does a sweet fishtail and winds up taking out half a substation in the process. Roof collapses are possible but less common, more so if there's a lot of heavy wet snow that accumulates on flat roofs.
Those are the legitimate issues with a snowstorm. Cue the hype machine.
Snowstorm panic is a vicious cycle. The forecast initially calls for snow. People get excited. The forecast waffles a bit and people get anxious. The forecast gets a little more accurate and people lose their shit when they realize it's really going to snow. They get all the dissonant messages on the internet and from a friend of a friend and the different news stations battling it out to be the number one in the area. The discord leads to enhanced hype out of confusion, which panics people even more. The panic leads to news stations reporting that everyone is panicking, and now everything the weatherman says is gospel. Whatever they say makes people panic more and wipe out the stores, causes traffic jams, and everyone is on edge.
It's absolutely, positively ridiculous. It's winter. It snows in the winter. You've gone through this several times a year almost every year since the beginning of freakin' time. There's no need to panic over snow like this. It's not like it's going to destroy everything you know and love. People don't freak out this much over tornado outbreaks, and those have the potential to kill hundreds with less than an hour's warning.
You can't drive for a day or two. You have to shovel it. School might be closed. I know it has real-life implications, but it's not the end of the world. There's no need to freak out. And I get my head bitten off every time I say that to people in the path of the white death. It's a lose lose situation. Winter weather forecasts are hard. Snowfall accumulation forecasts are almost never 100% accurate. There will always be more snow than predicted at one location and less at another. The cutoff between massive accumulations and a dusting can be razor thin at times. Accumulations in storms like the one threatening the Mid-Atlantic this week are largely based one where the band of heavy snow sets up. Models give you a good guess a day or two ahead of time, but it only matters where it really sets up.
Trying to communicate reasoned, level-headed winter weather forecasts to people who are tripping balls on hype is like trying to get a group of cats to line dance like The Rockettes. Nothing good comes of it and people wind up getting hurt in the process.
I guarantee you that if you stick around for the comments, at some point during the thread someone will seriously charge that I'm downplaying a very dangerous weather threat that kills people and makes them lose their jobs, and that I'm a heartless dickwad who should rot in hell for my heresy.
It's winter. It (usually) snows during the winter. Sometimes it causes issues, but there's no reason to act like it every snowstorm is the single worst thing that has ever happened in recorded history.