My brother Mark in Connecticut emailed me that he is in the Cone of Death for storm Juno, which will dump a couple feet of snow on New England today. This surprised me, since it’s usually my brother Steve in Florida who uses such alarmist terminology in reference to hurricanes.
“It’s a joke,” he explained. “We just need to hunker down like a woodchuck in a hole and it will pass.”
All news broadcasting has ramped up the Fear Factor and apparently even the weather man has gotten into the act. The term comes from a technical thing called the Cone of Uncertainty. Uncertainty should be the motto for weather forecasters, but how scary does Uncertainty sound? I mean, “We don’t know but stay tuned,” isn’t very compelling, now is it?
Fox News has to pop out of its bunker and shriek, of course, that this storm is “potentially historic” and “potentially crippling.” Any event is POTENTIALLY historic for cripes sake.
“For want of a nail, the shoe was lost, for want of a shoe the horse was lost, for want of a horse, the kingdom was lost.” This illustrates the potentially historic loss of a horse shoe nail.
It’s a blizzard, a part of life in cold climates. You stay inside and wait. Crews are out plowing and sanding and salting the roads-we used to wonder how many passes with the snow plow before they plowed down the snow-buried mailbox. (Usually took about two passes.) Schools will close (we kids used to love snow days!) and kids will go out and tunnel in the drifts, which used to reach 8-10 feet.
It’s a blizzard, it’s not a Cone of Death. I took my driver’s test in a blizzard, which was good because I drove about 10 MPH and the tester didn’t bother with parallel parking.
I object to fear-mongering because it makes us stupid. Who needs chemtrails, flouride and MKUltra for mind control? All they have to do is scare us and we will not think well.
Stay safe, New Englanders. Hunker down like woodchucks in a hole and this, too, shall pass.
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