What's the Weather Like? Thanks-No Thanks!
By Don Allen, Journal of A Black Teacher - (2025)
(Image generated by Canva, 2025)
I was enjoying my own pleasantly subdued Twin Cities Monday morning when the announcers began to rave—no, preach—about the Almighty Storm. “...Updates in the 6 AM hour on how you should prepare for the possibilities of heavy thunderstorms with a chance of hail and tornadoes.” Yes, I was caught up in the hype, too.
This is how it starts.
You could almost hear the timpani booming under the Doppler radar maps: an angry sky god was supposedly hovering somewhere over Iowa, deciding which of its favorite metropolises to annihilate. Cue shots of ominous purple blobs creeping in from the west and north, cue anchor-desk gravity, cue dramatic pauses worthy of Shakespearean portent. And like every other sensible Twin Citian who's been conditioned to believe that neon weather maps are the new Dead Sea Scrolls, I made a beeline for the nearest Cub Foods. There, in a tableau worthy of a post-apocalyptic action movie, I encountered my neighbors raiding the bread aisle, hurling gallons of milk into shopping carts, and debating whether three or four packages of Funyuns would be more likely to support human life after civilization had collapsed beneath quarter-inch hail.
I, too, was swept up in the barometric hysteria. Who wouldn't, after meteorologists uttered the word "tornado" in the same awed breathlessness reserved for "alien invasion"? That's right, people, this was billed as the night the skies themselves would visit Minneapolis and St. Paul, ripping billboards from their moorings and propelling kayaks down I-94. The local stations did everything except project the Four Horsemen onto the IDS Center, though I’m sure the graphics department had it queued up just in case ratings dipped below a commercial break.
The live remotes were masterpieces of cinematic panic. One reporter perched on an overpass as traffic whooshed behind him, warning that visibility was “already deteriorating”—even though the roadway sparkled beneath sodium lights like a freshly Windexed countertop. One daring reporter waded ankle-deep into a puddle, waving a ruler like Excalibur. She told us, in the breathless voice of someone reporting the fall of Rome, that "ground saturation is becoming a critical concern," which is news-anchor talk for "it rained a while ago and the lawn is a bit tipsy."
At the same time, weather apps sent out quarter-hourly warnings: "SEEK SHELTER NOW," followed by GPS-directed exclamation points. My phone buzzed so constantly it had a second job as a percussion instrument, ringing in tandem with every other phone in the supermarket, forming a chorus of doom that was perfectly harmonized with the squeal of shopping cart wheels. The algorithm was privy to our darkest fears: not harm, not damage to property—no, the real horror was the possibility of finding our pantries bare of Pop-Tarts at the very moment the End Times pulled into the driveway.
Outside, nature objected to the hyperbole. It was a light breeze that rustled the maples, the kind that asks whether you'd like a windbreaker. Temperature: comfortable. Humidity: textbook ideal. The clouds did darken, but with the haste of retirees heading to bingo. They took a few sheet-lightning selfies for social media, then ambled east. Nevertheless, studio radar loops zoomed in, out, and sideways, chasing storm cells like paparazzi after an A-list celebrity who had been spotted ordering an oat-milk latte.
X was ablaze by night with hashtags—#Stormmageddon, #RainStormsApril, #PrayForMN—because why experience weather when you can livestream your existential dread about it? Influencers posted suggestions for making artisanal candlelight dinners in the event the grid went down. Someone started a crowdsourced map of "safe basements" with Yelp-like reviews: "Three stars—nice concrete walls but Wi-Fi cuts out." A wellness coach hawked an emergency Zoom meditation, "Embracing the Cyclone Within," $29.99 per household, no refunds if the cyclone didn't materialize.
And finally, the finale, the climax hinted at by every forecaster peering into every camera in the metro: at precisely 9:42 p.m., the dreaded system finally arrived… as a sprinkling. Not even a respectable drizzle, mind you—just weather's version of a friendly handshake. The same anchors who'd been speaking in italics for twelve hours now switched to "Well, Mother Nature sure kept us on our toes! " as if they hadn't personally pumped lithium batteries into the shared adrenaline dispenser.
Graphics subtly shifted from apocalypse red to soothing cerulean, and people blinked at their televisions, surrounded by tower-of-Babel stacks of bottled water and Doritos. To be certain, I don't hold forecasters' occasional flub against meteorologists. The atmosphere is difficult to forecast; chaos theory is quite literally in the job description. And yet this was no mere miscalculation—it was dramaturgy, spectacle, an audition for an Emmy in "Best Use of the Word Catastrophic in a 30-Second Teaser." Somewhere, sober public service metastasized into an entertainment juggernaut.
We no longer have weather reports; we have Weather Cinematic Universes, complete with villains (low-pressure fronts), heroes (satellite imagery), and sidekicks (those hapless wind-blown field reporters clinging to their microphones like flares). The aggravating part is how willingly we consent to being players in their melodrama. We schedule evening agendas around the "first look at the model run," we let fear control shopping lists, and we behave as though the heavens are by subscription. I admit my complicity: I bought the granola bars, I reloaded the radar, I issued a cryptic "Stay safe, everyone" even as my cat snored peacefully on the windowsill and my boys sat at their computers doing their homework like a normal evening.
I could have opened the door, felt the air, relied on my own perception—but where's the social serotonin rush in that? So here's the lesson, printed in boldface for next time Storm Team Whatever cues the ominous cello music: turn off the TV, step outside, and look up. Is the wind styling your hair into avant-garde shapes? Are leaves cartwheeling past at suspicious velocities? Does the sky resemble a cosmic bruise? If not, perhaps the apocalypse can wait until morning coffee.
Weather was once a private conversation between a person and their horizon; now it's a corporate megaphone demanding we panic on a schedule.
Tonight, the only casualty was my dignity and the twenty-seven dollars I spent on siege provisions that never sieged. My cupboards are now a museum of impulse decisions—canned chickpeas, five varieties of trail mix, a gallon of distilled water perfect for either human consumption or radiator maintenance. The storm hype machine, however, churns relentlessly forward, already eyeing the next cold front like a starving producer greenlighting a sequel. Well, I'm out. The sky outside my window is a soft peach, a city that has utterly failed to be devastated. A cricket even has the temerity to chirp—clearly unaware that it's meant to be cowering in a bunker. I'll go join it. Maybe tomorrow I'll watch again, if only to see the anchors apologize for the hurricane that will probably come to fruition as a cooling breeze. But for now, I’ll take my chances with nature’s unscripted program. Ratings: five stars. No graphics. Popcorn optional, raincoat unnecessary.
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