hyperbole

@mywordwizard.com

According to the good word nerds at dictionary.com, the word hyperbole is defined as follows:

obvious and intentional exaggeration

Yeah, that seems right. For any of you who either live or have found yourselves along the Eastern seaboard and the Northeastern part of the United States in the last few days, you know all to well what hyperbole means. Why? Because you have sat through a veritable tsunami of unrelenting hyperbole from any number of weather prognosticators. Hah, see what I did there? Threw in my own bit of hyperbole.

It's become as predictable as death and taxes. A weather event presents itself and the weather prognosticators and their cohorts across the studio in the form of anchors and producers create drama bigger than the storm itself. Dramatic 'storm' theme music is introduced. A lame hashtag is introduced (#blizzard15 I'm talking to you). B-roll footage of empty grocery store shelves are played endlessly. Can we talk a minute about the 'run' on grocery stores? Why the run on bread? Are we that ill-prepared as a nation that not a one of us has more than a one days' supply of food on hand? What are we, people? Living off the land? Um, no. It is insanity.

It all played out again over the course of the last few days as Winter Storm Juno sprung out of nowhere. Media went into overdrive here in the 'stan as well as our surrounding states. 20 - 24 inches and raging winds were predicted for us. What did we get? Maybe six, maybe eight inches of snow and some strong, swirling gusts. Power stayed on for the duration of the horrific event. I didn't even need to tap into my secret reserve of Coke Zero to power through it all.

It's all this hyperbole that explains why I pretty much ignore local news coverage. I'll stick to the Twitter for my news, thank you very much. Honestly if we hadn't gone over to see some friends on Sunday night I wouldn't have known about this non-event. Now, to be fair, I'm all kinds of glad I'm not in the Boston area, where the hype met the experience. It was an EVENT there.

I think I'll go make waffles for dinner now. How else can one properly recover from all this weather terror?