Its Raining. Run for Your LIves!

Okay, I’m still on a weather kick. Here in North Louisiana, we had an eventful weather weekend. There were big storms, impressive amounts of rain, a little hail and some alarming thunder. This is the kind of weekend where TV weathermen are worth their keep. Interestingly, the guy doing the weather report on the “Today Show” mentioned Shreveport this morning. So, it’s all good for the local weather people, who got it right.
Today, I’m on the viewers. Or, at least I’m on the public, many of whom likely are not actually viewers.
The wife and I were at a fancy dinner party Sunday night, the kind with printed place cards on the table. We were seated with people we had not met before. They were nice people. The men were well dressed and successful professionals. Their wives were lovely and comfortable conversationalists. That is, until the topic became the weather.
In March, you can count on a couple of things to carry polite small talk: the NCAA basketball tournament and the coming of Spring. Because two teams from the state are in the tournament, there was plenty for the guys to talk about. One woman at the table (my wife, of course God bless her) was able to carry on a reasonably intelligent dialogue about the Tigers and the Demons. Politeness to the clueless at our table dictated a change in topic, however. There was the inevitable talk of kids and schools. A reasonably engaging moment or two about the differences between Episcopalians and Roman Catholics livened things up a bit. Then, since it had been raining, talk turned to the weather.
For at least forty years, TV weather reporters have been explaining the concept of a watch versus a warning. It seems pretty simple, a common sense thing. A warning means you are being WARNED, for God’s sake. Doesn’t the word WARNING, even without the capital letters, connote a certain urgency? A watch, on the other hand, implies something more benign. “Let’s watch.” Somebody else is doing something interesting. We’ll watch. As opposed to: You’ve been warned! Get it? A watch means conditions are favorable for something to happen in and close to the watch area. A warning means it’s happening right now! Why don’t people get that?
So, we’re sitting behind our place cards making polite conversation about how much it’s rained when someone says it’s supposed to rain some more. I said I didn’t realize that (After all, I’m not a big fan of the TV weather report. See previous posts). Then, one of the lovely ladies at our table breaks out this little gem: “Yes, we’re under a tornado warning.” What?! Christ almighty, run for your lives! Seek shelter. Put down that pilaf and head for a small room near the center of the structure!
Not so fast. Her ever-alert husband, no doubt accustomed to his bride’s alert status, quickly said, “I think it’s a thunderstorm watch.” Huh? What? Oh, Where’s Emily Latella when you need her? You remember the Gilda Radner character from Saturday Night Live, don’t you? She’s get something all wrong. Someone would explain it to her and she would say, “Oh, that’s completely different. Never mind.” The thing is, this poor woman didn’t realize what she had said. She just said, “Oh”
I know this is an intelligent person. She offered cogent observations about matters of life. But, with the weather thing, she was way off the mark. The TV consultants tell us that the weather is one thing that all viewers have in common, so the weather report is the most important and consistently compelling component of a newscast. I’ll concede that. Now, all they need is viewers who pay attention long enough to know when to come in out of the rain.

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