613 All For Naught.

This is kind of an odd thing for me to complain about, but the Weather Channel, a channel I pay almost no attention to unless I need its specific powers, has made itself useless.  Used to you could turn it on and they would tell you the weather, all the time.  Now the cancer of infotainment has crept in and almost completely destroyed the place.  I know why it happened.  They needed more money and viewers.  Knowing that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.

Their website is useless too.  It’s all the worst infotainment bits distilled into a list of links.  Which is fine, I guess.  I mean the National Weather Service does an okay job of providing actual useful information in severe weather.  The saving grace of the Weather Channel is their mobile application, which is surprisingly useful and accurate.  The app should have it’s own page, because the maps are really good and kept updated by the moment.  Which is what you want from a weather service.  The NWS page is kind of governmenty, and 8 bit.  I’m no great fan of Google’s ubiquity, but they certainly know their way around cartography.  When I found the little craphole town near my house listed on the Google map I was pretty impressed with their thoroughness.

Anyway, I only bring it up because the weather is bad, and it’s hailing.  Luckily my internet is still working so I can update the page.   The storm is just going to skim us, by the looks of it.  The smell of outside is being pushed into the house though.  Makes it seem less secure.  Like the outside is going to get in…

12 Comments

Well that is what local weather is for. Though the problem was before that with the weather channel when they started with commersals, and specials. One of the advantages of cable is that ABC has a channel that scrolls the news at the bottom and shows a radar of the state, and perdioiclly breaks down into major cities. Plus when there is something bad it focuses on it since it is just a computer from the national weather service for the area that repeats data.

I guess that’s all there is to it. I’m just not a big fan of our local news networks. In Kansas they were way better at telling you when shit was about to go down.

Hey if you want an alternative, you might check out Weather Underground at http://www.wunderground.com They have a much more customisable radar and usually local conditions available from all over your area. The place is basically a network of privately run weather instrument packages, and frequently far more accurate, up to the minute and more complete than either TWC or NWS. Love the comic, BTW.

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