Kurt Wirth is a junior majoring in communication. He can be contacted at [email protected]. It’s about time someone “outted” the Weather Channel as entertainment and not serious informational programming as it likes to suggest. With many friends in the Broadcast Meteorology major, a continued lifelong interest in meteorology and a wealth of exposure to the field, I speak on whatever credibility I may have accumulated to tell you today that the Weather Channel – and its Web site weather.com – is not to be trusted.
To begin, its weather predictions are mediocre at best. The corporation has apparently found it safer to suggest mild temperatures and downgrade the significance of storm systems than to tell the truth.
Take, for instance, our previous severe weather episode Feb. 5. This was a major severe weather outbreak, and the models consistently suggested such more than a week before. I checked the forecast approximately a week ahead of time for Starkville. The forecast simply mentioned a chance of “light showers” for the beginning of the week. No tangible timeframe, no mention of thunderstorms of any kind. When the day came, our area was placed by the Storm Prediction Center in a relatively rare “moderate” risk and the state saw more than a dozen tornado warnings.
Personal gain seems to have overcome citizens’ safety for the network.
Then there’s the company’s obsession with sensationalizing weather events and possible situations in order to boost ratings.
From “what if” scenarios to exaggerating real-life stories, this type of programming serves only to draw more viewership and actually numbs the public to actual risks. Currently there is a nightly program called “When Weather Changed History” that does just this.
When citizens that aren’t as aware of the true-life dangers of weather are constantly bombarded with drastic dramatizations, these people are going to overreact to the point of becoming jaded and then underreacting to imminent dangers in the future.
Needless to mention is the complete and utter lack of localized coverage, or the painfully inadequate hosts who stumble over words and lack the knowledge to even attempt to explain the models they are showing to America. It’s embarrassing and damaging to the credibility of the field as a whole.