Page 30 May 10, 2013
DAN’S PAPERS
danshamptons.com
Weather (Cont’d from previous page) They will shortly institute them in Wyoming, Colorado, North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Kentucky. After that comes us. For the month of March, a website where you could as a citizen add your comments for the Northeast was open, but it was not well publicized. I only read about it a few days ago while leafing through an issue of Newsday. And now it’s closed down. I would have liked, frankly, to add my own thoughts to the conversation. So now that I can’t, I can only do it here and just hope that they see it. We here in the Northeast, particularly in recent years, have gotten a really wide variety of nasty weather. It’s no longer just hurricanes and nor’easters. In the last five years we have had tornadoes, earthquakes, high winds and flooding. It would be hard to tailor an alert for our area. On the other hand, with the advances in weather forecasting science, which have been terrific, I think the new alerts could be laser sharp. It’s one thing to have hailstones, it’s another to have hailstones the size of baseballs, which we had last year for a brief time, though, thank God, nobody got hurt. Here are a few that I would have proposed if I had known about it. WAIT ATTENTIVELY—Keep your eyes and ears open. Something is coming. We’ll tell you more when it firms up.
BE ON YOUR GUARD—Assume a prizefighter’s pose. Keep looking around.
something with the weather, but we caught them.
WEATHER JOY COMING—There’s going to be a rainbow or some other neat thing. Or a flock of flying penguins.
WEATHER CAUTION—Slow down, there’s slippery roads ahead with fog, black ice, deer darting across the street, tree limbs crashing down and a motorcycle cop waiting for you.
WEATHER FIASCO—Several weather fronts collided, but not in any way like we thought they would. WEATHER ONSLAUGHT—Things have been pretty quiet for the last few days, yes? Well, all hell is about to break loose. FALSE RUMOR—That terrible thing you heard was coming, well, it wasn’t from us. It isn’t coming. WEATHER OUTAGE—Someone pulled the plug on the National Weather Service. When we find them, we will prosecute to the fullest extent of the law. WEATHER OUTRAGE—Something we’ve never had before, something nobody has even thought about, is coming. WEATHER INFESTATION—It could be locusts, the red tide or sleet, but whatever it is, it’s going to happen for a long time, stay, and be hard to get rid of. WEATHER PRANK—Some kids tried to do
WEATHER EMERGENCY—It’s so bad we don’t even have time to tell you about it. Just open the Bilco door and get down in the cellar. Now. WEATHER FLATULANCE—A big group of weather fronts came together and all the air went out of them all at one time. It wasn’t a fiasco, it was just loud. WEATHER MUGGING—The danger today is that the weather is going to jump out from behind a bush and steal your watch, your wallet and your cellphone. DEFCON 5—Put your head between your legs and kiss your ass good-bye. ALL CLEAR—Whatever you were doing before we sent you that earlier alert, the danger has passed and you can start doing it again. Do me a favor. Clip this out, put it in an envelope and mail it to: National Weather Service 1325 East West Highway Silver Spring, MD, 20910.