Seven-foot snow drifts and sliding buses

Jason Sandford

Jason Sandford is a reporter, writer, blogger and photographer interested in all things Asheville.

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WLOSers seemed to back down from the all the snow shouting yesterday, although they’re still going to great lengths to show us that, hey, it really snowed a lot in some places, while it didn’t in others.

First, they sent the station’s new boy wonder, Russ “Beefcake” Bowen, into the wilds of Graham county to show us 24-inches of snow that shut down the Cherohala Skyway. Russ chattered on excitedly about all the snow, as well as massive “seven-foot-tall snowdrifts” that would dwarf a man. Only we never see the giant snowdrifts.

And here’s the thing – no shit that it snows alot on a mountaintop. C’mon, people. The Cherohala Skyway winds through incredibly beautiful mountains at 4,000 feet above sea level and higher. Of course it’s going to snow a ton up there. Whatever.

Yesterday, Sheraldo had to trek all the way up into the wilds of Big Sandy Mush to find someone else snowed in days after the storm. I’ll give the WLOSers this – they’re bringing back some wonderfully scenic shots of our region. If you ever wonder why you’re living here in Ashvegas and Western North Carolina, just check out some of the footage these guys are brining back. It’s jaw-droppingly beautiful.

So then Mike “Cuervo” Cuevas gets on the weather to dissect what went wrong with the forecastiing, and tells us that the storm got stronger than expected. And that there are a million “micro-environments” or something like that that makes predicting exact snowfall totals across the region impossible. It’s Mission Impossible III, he says.

That’s funny, because none of the weather-guessers were saying that BEFORE the storm hit. Nobody was saying, hey everybody, it’s going to be hard to say exactly how much snow each community across our area will get, so take this prediction with a grain of salt. The fore-guessers will come back by saying, hey, we know we can’t get it exactly right, so we’re going to err on the side of caution and just scare the shit out of everyone. Just doesn’t seem right.

Last night at 6, WLOS led the infotainment report with quite a story – a school bus had slipped on an icy road, even though school buses had been ordered not to drive on icy roads. Was a child injured? Does the bus driver face disciplinary action? Those were the hyped up questions implicit in the report.

But it turned out that there was only one kid – just one kid – on the bus. And the bus driver called for help immediately, so no problem there. Why was this a lead story??? O, sweeps. Forgot.

At 11, Charu had a story about somebody missing some money somewhere, but they had until Thursday to come up with it. I didn’t get it.

The big sweeps special report of the night was by Holly Headache, doing the old chestnut about whether or not organic food is good for you. Holly’s story was asking the question – is paying more for organically grown food really worth it? Her report never answered that question.

But I did like the Henderson County apple farmer who complained “about what I call tree-hugger types.” He called pesticides “spray materials” that would hardly kill insects, much less a human. Good one! I’ll have a couple of helpings of spray materials with my fruit cocktail, please.