Jason Sandford
Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.
In a spectacular sweeps weather-guessing failure, WLOS soothsayers totally and completely missed the weather forecast. After repeating warnings all day Friday of “heavy snow” and “our first major winter storm of the season,” I look outside my kitchen window to see some wet grass and gray skies.
This is more than a dud, WLOSers. If you had even one measely shred of credibility before, you’ve certainly got none now. This is the ball dribbling between Bill Buckner’s legs in game seven of the World Series. This is the U.S. in Iraq searching for weapons of mass destruction. This is Robert Downey Jr. walking down a suburban Calley street in his underwear, knocking on your door, muttering for help and asking for just one more chance, please God, please.
A complete and utter breakdown.
Let’s look back, just for a little perspective.
Friday morning, Bob Cobweb cranked up the snow sirens by straight-up telling us that a bad storm was setting up, a classic nor’easter. He said you might as well go out and get everything you need now and plan to stay inside Saturday because it was going to be hell outside. Bob, a true veteran of these storms, stayed away from actually giving us any projected snowfall totals, but he assured us that this would be the first major winter storm of the year and that we would get snow. Victoria literally told us to go out and buy all the bread and milk we needed now.
As the day wore on, blizzard warnings started popping up on the Weather Channel for the northeast, places like Washington, D.C., and New York City. But once the “blizzard” word is out there, it can’t be taken back. People pick it up, spread it around. And here in Ashvegas, we know blizzard and it freaks us out. Nobody’s forgotten the Blizzard of ’93, and nobody wants a repeat.
So WLOSers keep up the sirens all day, slowing amping up the hype. At 6, a news reader brought us mob scenes from Bob Ingles’ grocery aisles and convenience store gas pumps. The panic had set in. Little old ladies needed a box of Kleenex. North Ashvegas moms had to have another case of Juicy Juice. West Ashvegas hippies needed that 12-pack of Rolling Rock.
At 11 p.m., Diva Darcel showed us a live shot of I-240 and said the highway was clear and dry, but all that could change when the snow gets here. Then the Diva tossed it over to Cherub Charu, who really gave us a classic sweeps story. (Charu’s been a roll, if you haven’t noticed.)
After a day of anxiety and over-anxiousness, Charu actually went there. She went straight for the blizzard angle. The impending storm, she told us, quite resembled the Blizzard of ’93. To back that up, she went out and talked to a little old lady buying some kerosene. “This could be a blizzard, so I want to be ready,” she said. Another woman filling her giant SUV with gallons upon gallons of fuel, said she had to tank up because she might be snowed in. (Is that logical?) “I remember the blizzard and I want to be ready,” she told Charu.
Charu topped it off by talking to a UNCA meteorologist, who told Charu – get this – that the impending storm and the storm of ’93 actually weren’t comparable at all. They were nothing alike, he said. There’s no comparison, he said. This, after Charu built an entire lead story around the premise of comparing the impending storm to the Blizzard of ’93.
So, there you have it. A spectacular sweeps flameout, if ever there was one. I suppose WLOSers have the rest of the day today to hope for a few flakes, but right now, my street is clear and the temperature is rising.
Won’t it be fun to watch tonight to see how they play it all? O yes.
wait a minute… i thought that west asheville hippies stopped drinking rolling rock as soon as they started selling yeungling… or at least when pbr became cool again!
RadioLongAgo: "Do the newscasters despise the state DOT/grocery store obligatory story as much as the viewer hates watching them?"
Absolutely. But "that’s what the viewers want to see," goes the newsroom reasoning, so it’s off to the DOT and Ingles. At least enough DOT maintenance yards have switched to the liquid stuff, though, so we don’t have to see as many of the reporter-slides-down-the-salt-pile standups.
This is good stuff, Ash, I’m laughing my a** off. Make’s you wonder about an Ingles conspiracy. Or perhaps like our current Washington environment, there are lobbyist -Merita, Maola and Budweiser – who are slipping Bob and Julie a few bucks to pitch the snow angle.
Send me the link to Coach K the rat.
I have to admit, LOS leading the newscast with Julie hanging out blundering around the State DOT office, ("we’re ready!") and the grocery store was a stroke of genius. It gave me time to hop over to Cessarich and see his forecast, and see what the lead story on 7 was also. I was able to return to LOS minutes later and not miss a thing.
Do the newscasters despise the state DOT/grocery store obligatory story as much as the viewer hates watching them? Who knows…
I still think the guy that owns Ingles is in cahoots with Bob Caldwell. It’s not even RAINING in Hooterville.
Edgy: yup, sure is. Or was, at least. My little weather widget says it still is… but who can trust weather services? 🙂
Minor point: it was *Bill* Buckner
Speaking of the Blizzard of ’93, let’s remember that our team of weather guessers at the time were pulling the same thing the current crop are: keep predicting a major storm and you may just be right one time. In ’93, Ken and Gary had been hyping a big storm the weekend before the big one actually hit. That one turned out to be less than we’ve gotten today. "It all evaporated in the upper atmosphere" before it could reach the ground. Then the next week, they were making the same predictions. This time, they were right, and made sure to keep reminding us of that — never bringing up the previous weekend’s failure to counter their undeserved pride in themselves.
Damn, is it snowing in Blk Mtn? I’m about to head that direction with a mini-van full of kids.
You are feisty today, Ash. Keep ’em honest!
Huw, thanks for your comments. You’re quite right.
But from my kitchen window, the WLOS weather-guessing is a total failure.
At work it had been snowing since 2 AM. There were two or three inches on the ground (and still falling) when I left work in Black Mountain this AM. The roads were covering up, the trees had that lovely white-line effect going. I was rather disappointed to find none here at home in East Asheville… but it did, in fact, snow in our area. I wonder what’s going on up in Weaverville.
I think that, despite Bob’s obvious bumble-quality, it must be hard to work through so many Microclimates (in that people don’t want to hear "snow in this square mile, rain in that one, nothing in that third square mile over there). The only other place I’ve known with such temperate and yet maddeningly varied weather is San Francisco – where you can go from shorts in the Mission to three sweaters in the Castro or North Beach just by riding the Muni a couple of stops.