The megaphones, pom-poms and letter sweaters have not come out yet, but I and others have noticed that the fine art of cheerleading is still around when it comes to the early stages of hurricane coverage.
There is almost a longing, soulful tinge to the voices of some weather folks as they note tropical low-pressure areas yearning to break into the wild world of named storms.
They're apparently yearning to have those names emblazoned on news networks and newspaper front pages for history.
(Early-on, by the way, storms were named after the saint's day on which they occurred. The use of names began officially in the United States in 1953 with women's names. Men's names were added in 1978.)
Call them what you will, the Weather Channel and others "heart" hurricanes, a line I stole, with substantial parts of this column, from Pete Reinwald, with whom I worked back in the dark ages when he was a young reporter and I a decidedly less young one for the Times.
Reinwald is now an editor in the Chicago Tribune's lifestyles department, helping produce Tribune books and edit a separate publication called the Printers Row Journal.
He took note of the same trend that had been bothering me when he posted some Weather Channel quotes on Facebook.
Isaac, early on, he notes, was described as an area "favorable for development," and included a "nice area of thunderstorms."
Also referred to was the "best part of the storm" — where you find all of the violent weather — as "our system" targets the Louisiana coast.
A former sportswriter, Reinwald also notices a lot of sports metaphors in use, as, "It's gone back and forth, head-faking us every day," but "within the next 12 to 24 hours it's going to be a whole new ball game for New Orleans."
Occasionally, he notes, you will hear a little wishful thinking, as in, "It's got a lot of work to do."
One commenter on Reinwald's post said, "It makes me laugh when they talk about storms being poorly organized, as if, with a snappy management course, it would straighten up and fly right."
Reinwald was kind enough to offer me use of his stuff without attribution.
But I believe in giving credit where due; it was fun to exchange messages with an old friend and colleague who has done well; and the Internet has made plagiarism really difficult to get away with.
I went to the airwaves to look for more examples, but the cheerleading seems to slack off when things reach the "Holy crap, I'm standing here in this stupid slicker and the thing is headed for me!" stage.
And I don't want to be too hard on my friends in broadcast either.
Naming storms leads almost automatically to personification and commentary is always better with a healthy dose of metaphor.
I have been accused of overuse myself from time to time and that might be fodder for another column some day.
For right now, it's just a poorly organized idea swirling around in the lower recess of my mind, an area of decidedly low pressure, wanting to come out but not quite sure that the time is right and wanting desperately to be full blown when it appears.
It has a lot of work to do.
Loading...