The Boy Who Cried Wolf

I just had a quick talk about this with my beautiful, brilliant wife and thought it was worth typing out.

We live in New England.  It seems like every year when the weather starts turning cold the local news weather departments hype up the first potentially big storm to such a degree that everyone within viewing range panics.  Then that horrifying storm hits and its just an ordinary storm and it was nothing to get excited about.  This has happened at least once a year for the five years my lovely bride and I have been together.  Even Hurricane Irene was a bust for most of Massachusetts, although it caused quite a havoc to our North and West.

Now we are neck deep in another autum and the weather is about to start getting cold and nasty and sure enough, right on cue, we have a storm coming that the local meteorological folks are freaking out over and hyping up to the panic point.

So how should we respond?  A very large part of my brain is telling me that this is all crap and nothing to get worked up about.  Every year we go through this bullshit and every year we get ticked off when nothing happens. This is no different.  Don't worry about it.

But there is this other part of me that thinks of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.  The law of averages predicts that eventually the weather clowns are going to get one right.  Maybe we should tape up the windows and batten the hatches and prepare for the worst.  Maybe this time there actually is a wolf out there.

How do we know?