Here we go again. Time for the media to start fear mongering about the weather again.

I can see how it must get pretty boring during the warm months here in the Northeast. I mean, how much fun is it to talk about a sunny day or a passing thunderstorm for months and months? These meteorologists long for cold winter days and big nor’easter storms so they can talk about the same things over and over again ad nauseam.  Some of them even for go sleep and stay up for days to keep reporting on accumulations.

I’m sure they all got their jollies though a few months ago when Hurricane Irene churned up the coast. A storm that by all accounts would lay waste to New York City. They all took comfort in having had days and days to warn everyone to start stocking up on gold for the end of the world and directing everyone to the local grocery for milk, bread and eggs before the apocalypse.

I can just see all the local weather people gathering in their offices when the storm passed and the sun started to peek out. High-fiving each other and saying “Good Job!”.

But that was a ‘one-off’. A nice chance to issue a dire warning while waiting anxiously for Winter.

Then they received an early Christmas present. Mother Nature, in her wisdom, decided to throw a curve ball and play a little “trick” this Halloween by dropping some snow. And the media ran with it. I think the headline says it all:

“Scary Weather? High elevations may get 4-6 inches of snow, most of Valley to see much less.”

So here we go again. And this time they get to use Scary to coincide with Halloween for more dramatic effect. A Nostradamic prediction of doom from the local newspaper for an out of the ordinary “Halloween” snow storm in the Northeast. A storm that might drop 4-6″ of snow in the highest elevations? FOUR to SIX INCHES?? You’ve got to be kidding. Have these people reporting this event even lived here long? EVERY storm in the winter is 4-6″.

So let me see if I’ve got this straight. It “may” snow as much as 4-6 inches in the highest elevations (meaning the mountain areas where no one lives). The rest of us will probably see less. That qualifies as “scary”?  Hardly. The only thing scary is that we have to wait six months until we are out of the woods and the warm weather is back.

Now I’m no meteorologist but I did have a life science course in ninth grade. Armed with that knowledge and my reading ability since the age of four I did a quick scan of the extended weather forecast and drew the following conclusion:

Temperatures are said to be somewhere in the mid 50’s the days following the “storm to end all storms”.  One of the first things we learned in class was that a temperature that high is more than enough to melt snow. Especially light accumulations.

I’ve determined that any snow we get this weekend will be gone by Monday. Yet the media is warning us to have shovels and snow blowers on alert.

I can already see it’s going to be a long, cold winter.