The weather report for Erie PA this fall has read like a good novel. It starts out with an unusually positive sequence of events, and then quickly turns sour. It’s a page-turner, because just when you think you know what happens next…it doesn’t.

We had a glorious early part of the season with warm temperatures that lasted well into late October. Halloween was downright balmy! I remember Halloweens when I was a kid trudging through three inches of snow.  Our first blast of snow however came within days of Oct. 31st. Since then, as hard as they try, the weather patterns have been causing headaches for our forecasters.

For example, this past weekend there were some reports that the city could get a foot of snow. We were battening down the hatches for a real blizzard. Now indeed, it was really windy, but snow fall had to be just a couple inches, barely a blip on the way to our normal 90-120 inches per winter.  Last week, one of local TV weathermen said that there were multiple conflicting models coming his way, and he admitted that it was hard to predict what was going to happen, given the data presented.

I guess to me, that uncertainty is ok.  It’s more forthright to say that you’re unsure than to predict a massive snowfall that gets everybody in a tizzy, cancelling all of their Christmas plays and bingo nights and then it rains or just snows a little.

I feel that to a certain extent that the weather business has gotten sucked into the news business of overkill team coverage and hyperbole.  Sure the weather often is a legitimate news story, especially in a great weather market like Erie. But our media people need to remember that the reason why we live in this region is that many of us like the weather the way it is; we don’t need to be hyped up about it. Just tell it like you see it, and we’ll just weather the storm.