Weathermen have the best job. Radar shows big angry red blotches of electronic clouds barreling our way? Looks like rain. Maybe 30% chance. But let's proclaim 60% just to be safe. Then the sun comes out, and we're golden. Type some temperatures on the screen. Read them out loud for two minutes. It's Miller time.
Unfortunately, they are also the source of countless fatalities. I'm talking about tornado forecasting.
People, what is a warning? If signs warn me about smoking, or bears, or Goodfield tap water, that means I should be careful to avoid these things. I should not seek them out. This rule keeps me safe. So when I see "tornado warning" on the screen, the colors pinpointing my county are not scary to me. "Tornadoes may appear in this area," the sensible mind concludes. "Nothing to worry about, just be careful." Because if there were in fact tornadoes ripping through my community like a carnivore through a picnic basket, surely someone would yell something more immediate. Like, "Watch out for that tornado!"
Weathermen disagree. Probably because they skipped English classes in favor of temperature-typing and blotch-monitoring. They advise us to "watch" tornadoes that don't even exist. And when one does show up, they beguile us out into our vegetable gardens, naively and faithfully trusting in their "warnings" and putting our lives in their hands, while they excitedly turn back to the radar to see if they can spot teeny humanoid-sized blips flying in every which direction from the center of the tornado-blotches.
You can bet that if someone warns me that a giant asteroid could strike Chicago, I'm doing a background check to see if he was once a weatherman.
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