:15 break come back:
If you're reading this near show time, I apologize. I'm out of time and this IS NOT fully fleshed out. Drought, rain, snow....it all makes sense, but sadly made sense Saturday morning early when kids were stirring and strawberries needed to be rinsed and washed for them. Expect my world class thesis on how to get snow soon.
The media owns us and proved it by whispering a four letter word late Thursday.
We want things as a society. We require them. Overall, we need the basics and those don't shift from place to place: your food, your shelter, your clothing ('the boring three'). From place to place, though, some items on the menu may change. We live in CC. We know that means that 11 months out of the year we're going to fry, sweat and melt. We know it, we deal with it. Some of us love it.
But when you fry 11 months a year the idea that change can come gets a little intoxicating. Cold? That could actually happen? I think we had some cold a year ago didn't we? I recall that there was a magical snow a few years ago, right? Did that happen?
The media, sensing our overall malaise and hearing the 10,000th citizen invent the classic, "90 degrees on Thanksgiving!...who would have thought?", says and prints a four letter word. A four letter word, when uttered in a temprate climate, is more damaging that starts with f or d...I'm talking the 's word': snow.
And they don't have to yell it. Just whisper it into our ears: snow.
It started with this caller.com whisper: Snow in Corpus Christi? (since the lack of snow it appears this headline has actually been changed to: Light snow in forecast for Friday, hard freeze for some areas Saturday
And that's all it took for everyone to GO ABSOLUTELY CRAZY.
In this case we went from it may snow to we will be skiing on the 'hills' of SPID in about 3 hours. I heard it happen at work, in different Stripes around town, on sales calls. 'It may snow' became 'ready for the blizzard' in about 6 hours.
If you are a social media user then you saw it with posts like:
"Is that snow?" "What is sleet" "I've got snow here!!!" "A flake landed on my jacket" "I just stripped down nude and rolled around in the mud because I saw some sleet"
Mine:
"this just in: single snowflake sighted in cc, population's collective head explodes in hysteria followed by post-apocalyptic looting and cannibalism"
And finally, the admission that all was hype at Caller.com: It snowed in Corpus Christi, whether you saw it or not:
You probably saw sleet Friday morning in Corpus Christi.
Believe it or not, it also snowed, weather officials said. It wasn’t very much, just a trace.
After a wintry mix with near freezing temperatures hit the Coastal Bend and the state, local school districts sent students home early, flights were canceled at Corpus Christi International Airport and events Saturday were called off.
Only trace amounts of snow accumulated in parts of Bee, Calhoun, Goliad, Jim Wells, Kleberg, Live Oak, Nueces, Refugio, San Patricio and Victoria counties, where the National Weather Service said up to 3 inches were possible Friday.
The media and media savvy people can certainly play us by knowing what we want and giving us hope that we're going to get it. Smart people realize that if you want something you've got to a) go out and get it or b) if it's something that's somewhat out of your control, you've got to set up the conditions that make the thing you're after most likely to occur.
Bill Vessey, though, had nothing to do with it. I don't normally watch channel 3. I'm a channel 6 man. Since weather is so important to my real job, though, I tivo'd 3 and 6. Bill Vessey, who moves around too much when he talks in front of the map...especially his hands...explained in great detail that we weren't getting snow: snow requires this temperature at this height, precipiation that does this or that, then you need this temperature at ground level..etc...i got lost in the middle of it.
We as a community want snowth. We crave it. People that think see the writing on the wall: without snowth this city is going to die. But, we need to get serious about it and realize there are ways to make it snow and then things that make us feel good about snowth but don't get us closer to any real snowth. To get snowth you can't dream it, you can't hype it, you can't wish really hard. The caller times can't create it by writing headlines about it. I can't create a facebook page and get snow or create a committee and talk about snow real hard, open the window and believe that it will be there. Snowth comes from elements being set in place at the right time. It's hard to snow in a national-crisis-level economy and criticizing leaders for lack of snowth now and 8 months into terms is irresponsible. That doesn't create snowth. Think Bill Vessey: snow comes when, and only when, the temperatures are this and that up here, this and that on the ground and this happens in between. That happened in 2005 on the magical snow-filled Christmas and was happening in the late 1950s when we were building high schools left and right to accomodate all the snow. It snowed once in CC. That was a magical time. I was glad to be here when it happened and will always cherish that memory.
I want it to snow again, but we can't point to the 2005 Christmas and say that it snows a lot and that it's still snowing. It's time to get temperatures correct in the stratosphere and temperatures correct on the ground. Then and only then, when the rains begin to fall can we PREDICT snow correctly and absolutely.
More soon...very soon.
I needed to address the walk out last week and did so by referring to my blog on it here.
And finally the top 10 flicks of the 2000s. Here's 10-6. Hear 5-1 on The Movie Hour at The Movie Hour.
6. Before Sunset, 2004
7. Almost Famous, 2000
8. Y tu Mama Tambien, 2002
9. The Incredibles, 2004
10. Moulin Rouge, 2001
Misc.: What Waiters Won't Tell You
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