The Weathermen (Not the Radical Group)

Weathermen are becoming like superheroes. Ever since Katrina devastated New Orleans and Sandy left a path of destruction on the East Coast, people have become more and more attached to both their local weather anchors and to The Weather Channel. Global warming and the melting of the polar ice caps is certainly playing a major role in the increased frequency of climate and environmentally related disasters and  a little bit of the Stockholm Syndrome where the victim becomes attached to his persecutor may be playing a role in increasing the importance of the weathermen in our lives. It used to be that weathermen were the low men on the television totem pole, but now they have become larger than life personalities. Al Roker, the weather reporter on the Today show has become a major personality, who has increasingly begun to take on the aura of one of the five star generals, like Patton, MacArthur and Eisenhower, who led the allies to victory in World War II and the local CBS station in New York has created a cult figure in the debonair Lonnie Quinn, a handsome blond who looks like he could have been one of the Beach Boys and who is a source of solace to many of those fearful of the effects of hurricanes building force in the Bahamas or low pressure fronts building over the Great Lakes and threatening the East Coast with Winter Storm Warnings as the cold season begins. Dylan famously sang, “You don’t need a weatherman/ To know which way the wind blows.” But to quote another Dylan line, “times they are a changin’”and now with El Nino and other threats you do need a weatherman, and not the radical kind, to figure out where the next gust will be coming from.