Anyone Need An Extra Loaf of Bread?

We live in a world of action followed by reaction. If you don’t believe me, just tune into your local social media pages and post something controversial. Then watch what happens. You’ll find out you had enemies you never knew you had. And on rare occasions, you might actually find new friends you never knew you had.

I say this, not because of the way people shamefully behaved themselves during the changing of the President. And that was on both sides. No, what I had in mind was what happened with the weather predictions the week before. A week following our first snow of the winter, the forecast was for our first major ice event of the season. It could be devastating to Oklahoma, they said. You need to load up your homes with supplies in anticipation of an extended period of time without power or the ability to drive anywhere, they told us. And we did it because we had experienced moments like that before and we knew what it felt like to be unprepared for something that affected our lives that negatively.

I went to the store early that Thursday afternoon to pick up something for my dad when I saw the first glimpses of just how seriously Oklahomans were taking the weather reports. Wal-Mart was a madhouse and what should have been a simple trip to the store ended up being a lengthy experience. Unfortunately, I had to return later that night for myself to pick up a handful of food items just in case the weather reports were right. The parking lot was full and the lines were long and deep. The shelves, on the other hand, were nearly bare. It was a good thing I already had a loaf of bread or I would have been driving around all night.

Friday morning was crazy. Having already been informed by the gym that my yoga class had been cancelled for that morning, I was expecting to spend the day inside hanging out with my son. Instead, all it took was a quick browse of Facebook to see that predictions fell somewhat short of the “Icepocalypse” we had all been promised. The concerns people had for their safety turned to anger at those who had caused them to feel that way – our local meteorologists.

 I’m not here to take shots at people who at the end of the day are always focused on helping save lives. Telling people to stay inside during potential weather anomalies is not a bad idea. Plus, many of those people are friends who I have worked with in the past and I’m not going to question their integrity or professionalism. Unfortunately, with so much of the business world pushing people to their limits to get more and more work done, it doesn’t go over well when businesses have to shut down their doors because weather forecasts are telling them to keep their employees home. As busy as Wal-Mart was on Thursday, most businesses were either planning on shutting down or at least starting late on Friday. Schools were closed. Even a meeting I had with a prospective client Friday afternoon was up in the air until we had a chance to see what the weather was like.

In hindsight, all this anger could have been easily avoided. Had the potential ice storm been explained more clearly as something that might happen based on various conditions, then I’m sure people would have been more reasonable with their outbursts on social media. If the weather men and women had just said a few degrees one way or another could make a significant difference in whether or not the rain froze into ice (the temperatures were in the low thirties and high twenties throughout most of the weekend), then we might have seen a different mood on social media. But instead, it seemed as if the predictions focused on the winter event being a promise rather than a forecast. Ratings seemed to rule out over common sense and logic. Images of “drive south” were in our heads throughout the week.

Again, as I said before, being safe isn’t such a bad thing. Lives were likely saved by people not going out on the roads during those few hours when the roads were actually slick. Western Oklahoma did have some severe winter storm conditions and those people were probably helped by the forecasts. But Chicken Little didn’t gain a lot of friends when he always said the sky was falling, and the wolf was probably thrilled that Peter didn’t have the common sense to know the difference between when to cry wolf and when to just shut up. Maybe we could use a little more of that in Oklahoma.