Crying wolf
I got a weather alert on my phone on Sunday warning me of a “heavy” winter storm that was being forecast to hit Tuesday evening.
Following the link to the full alert and reading beyond the attention-grabbing headline I learned that between two and four inches of snow was being expected.
Gasp! Obviously with such a horrific storm on the way, I should have spent Monday stripping the store shelves to hoard essentials such as bread, milk and brandy. Or maybe not.
To anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes in a Wisconsin winter, two to four inches of snow is an inconvenience more than any sort of “real” emergency. It is the difference between giving yourself another 10 to 15 minutes in your morning routine versus getting up several hours early to get the snowblower running so that you can get your car out of your driveway only to have the plow truck undo all your work the moment you are done.
In all fairness, there are places where two to four inches of snow would be enough to close schools and businesses and shut down major highways. Those places also have bugs that don’t die in the winter, very large spiders and poisonous water snakes all of which are high on my “nope” list and among the reasons I choose to live where there is real winter.
Like many people in Taylor County, I have made a point to sign up for the new Hyper-Reach Emergency Alert system. The county made the switch in vendors from CodeRed for the alert system this fall. If you haven’t done so yet you can go do it by following the link on the county’s website or go to: http://hyperreach. com/witaylorsignup.html, call 715-447-7665 or text “alerts” to 715-447-7665.
Go ahead and do it now while you are thinking of it, I will wait for you to get back.
While it is important to get alerts and to be prepared in the case of potential dangerous weather conditions, my complaint about Hyper-Reach is that, well, it is kind of hyper. Leading up to last month’s ice and snow storms we were getting alerts multiple times a day with the alerts including text messages, phone calls and emails to all our cellphones and our landline phone. By day, I mean a 24-hour period.
I suppose if I was one of those sickos who start their day with an early morning run, I would appreciate the 3 a.m. wake-up calls letting me know it was snowing, along with the 3 a.m. call the day before letting me know that snow was on the way and the wake up call the day after letting me know it had snowed. On top of the calls and alerts I had received every few hours, to remind me on the off chance that I had forgotten.
At some point, alerts about impending weather events take on the aspects of the story of the boy who cried wolf. You remember, the story about the boy who sounded false alarms too many times and when there was an actual crisis no one believed him.
A 3 a.m. wake up call to tell me that it is going to snow in Wisconsin, in late December makes me wonder what will happen come spring and summer. Will we get alerts that there is a heavier than normal dew and that the approach at hole 7 at Tee Hi might be more slick than normal for early morning golfers? Or maybe that there could be a chance of a breeze and you should wear a jacket if you plan to be outside?
Weather alerts are important and people should pay attention to them, but repeated too often they become background noise and fade into the general buzz of our days. The sad irony of this is that it sets us up for being truly caught off guard when the big one does hit and we are left huddled under every blanket we own, with the power out and praying that our pipes won’t freeze, while contemplating rationing out the stale saltines that we had in our cupboard from the last time someone had a bout with a stomach flu.
Of course, the better option is to maintain a level of preparedness. Keeping a stocked bug out bag ready to go at all times and maintaining a cache of food, ammunition and essential supplies at remote locations may be a bit much. To a lesser degree there are plenty of common sense things we can do to make sure we stay safe when it comes to severe weather or any other emergencies. Foremost among those is to pay attention to the alerts.
Who knows, this time the wolf may really be at the door.
Brian Wilson is News Editor at The Star News.
