Good Reporting

Well, it’s the first real spring storm of the year to hit Wichita…you’d think from listening to the radio it was the end of the world. Yes, I know some people got hail, and some even got rather large hail. And there was rain and lighting. But it’s a spring thunderstorm, folks. There isn’t much danger of a tornado (although I also know that one can form any time out of a thunderstorm), and we have people driving around in this stuff talking on their cell phones to the radio station about how bad (or not) it is.
I don’t know what possesses people to go off the deep end when they see a few raindrops or some marble to golf-ball size hail. Now, if it would hail as it did a couple of years ago and the stones made dents in the ground I could put my size 12’s into completely, now THAT’S a storm. That one really made the news as it happened in October instead of the spring of the year. And there really was a LOT of damage.
I will give a pass to those folks who get nervous when the lightning and thunder come that have gone through the throes of a tornado first hand. There’s nothing quite like it, I’m told, and you’re forever changed after you’ve huddled with the dog and kids with a blanket or mattress over your head in the bathtub or a closet while your home and everything you own is blown to kingdom come. Kind of brings life and everything related to it into a more proper perspective.
In any event, I guess we’re in for another season of the weather guys and girls trying to out do one-another for ratings and advertising. I know the weather centers in these television markets are high-tech and high-expense. Do you have any idea what it costs to have at least three meteorologists on staff full time and a suite in the studio packed full of computers, monitors, radar, and all the other? Three to five hundred thousand a year is probably somewhat in the ballpark. That’s a lot of car commercials. I know they have to get their money back somehow. And I do appreciate good reporting on these events.
But let’s hear GOOD reporting this year. I’m not holding my breath, though…