The Star Admits The Obvious - Storm Porn

Has the weather gone Hollywood?

In an effort to grab higher ratings and boost advertising in a fiercely competitive market, some television stations are being accused of exaggerating, dare we say hyping, their weather forecasts.

Crippling ice storms, devastating tsunamis and powerful hurricanes enthral viewers like a drawn-out O.J. Simpson trial or the heart-wrenching coverage of 9/11. Hurricane Katrina had us mesmerized for weeks – and the ad revenue flowed.

It used to be that weather forecasters were criticized for getting it wrong. Now, in true Chicken Little style, it's being suggested they're consistently overstating their predictions – the depth of snow, the severity of wind-chill factors – urging the audience to brace for the worst.

David Phillips, senior climatologist for Environment Canada, calls it "storm porn."

Yes, he's heard the criticism that "some news producers go to their meteorologists and tell them to make it bigger and badder." But that is in the U.S., he says, where broadcasters like CNN disperse teams of "atmospheric paparazzi" to catch the wind and rain behaving badly.

Phillips laughs. The viewing public is titillated by shots of pretty boys Anderson Cooper and Rob Marciano buffeted by a coastal storm or huddled against a rampart holding inside-out umbrellas, as sheets of metal fly around their heads.

But Phillips is not convinced that maelstrom has hit Canada – yet.

It's hard to prove that weather reports are being exaggerated, he points out, because there are too many variables. The intensity, duration and path of a storm can change on a dime. "At the last moment, it can stall, pick up a shot of adrenaline from another storm or swerve 100 kilometres south."

The storm that hit Toronto Dec. 16 started out as a "pimple" in Texas, he says. "It took five days to get here. A lot can happen in five days. So they have to decide – do we go for it early and tell viewers this storm could be enormous or wait until we're more sure?"

Brett Anderson, senior meteorologist for AccuWeather.com, says there are some news providers who are guilty of hyperbole when it comes to the weather but he insists it's not rampant.

"I think there is a small percentage of TV stations that do indeed hype the forecast to draw attention to themselves and thereby increase their ratings," he told the Star by email from his home in Pennsylvania. "It is usually the stations that have low ratings to begin with that need that extra boost in viewership and will do what is necessary to get that boost."

"This is weather as entertainment," says Mark Fieder, president of the real estate company Avison Young. Because Fieder and his family are avid skiers, weather reports are important. "I'm frustrated by the constant overstatement of weather reporting," he says.

Fieder relies on accurate weather reports to plan his week, particularly his weekends, most of which are spent at resorts north of the city that are a sometimes-treacherous two-hour journey by car.

"It's not that they're wrong," he says. "I can understand mistakes. But it seems to me the weather predictions are consistently worse than what actually comes.

"It makes you fretful about the drive. Now I go directly to the Environment Canada website. It is by far the most accurate. I even look at the radar and satellite pictures and do my own interpretations."

Keith Westerlage, vice-president of on-camera meteorology at The Weather Channel in the U.S., says North America is a weather-obsessed culture. And it's big business. This month, The Weather Channel was put up for sale for an estimated $5 billion (U.S.).

"The nightly weather forecast is the original reality television, particularly during big weather events," he says. "You become glued to your television because you know someone who lives near that storm or you watch and you're glad you're not there. There are lots of reasons we watch."

In recent years, the weather has been the big story. And, like Phillips, Westerlage is aware that some news directors in U.S. regional markets encourage their weather reporters to make their broadcasts more exciting.

"There is a lot of competition out there, so we have to work hard to keep our viewers tuned in to us," Westerlage says.

Christopher Scott, manager of Forecast Operations at The Weather Network, says there's a natural market for weather news among Canadians.

"Weather impacts everything we do," he says. "And because we have four distinct seasons, we are a true weather country. It's the variability that keeps people coming back for more."

Scott says the 30 meteorologists at The Weather Network "focus on the science. What you see on television is an interpretation of that science."

Gordon McBean, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, agrees that Canadian broadcasters are less likely to exaggerate weather reports dramatically to spike ratings. Unlike many U.S. markets, Canada has all kinds of weather. There is no dearth of material, says McBean, who was assistant deputy minister responsible for the Meteorological Service of Environment Canada from 1994 to 2000.

What's more, all severe weather warnings are issued from a single and remarkably reliable source – Environment Canada, he says.

Though Westerlage adheres to a conservative definition of hype, he acknowledges that exaggerated weather reports are more common and, worse, the broadcasters of these reports are not being held accountable.

He also worries these smaller stations are putting their weather reporting crews in harm's way "to get that money shot" of a looming tornado, say, or ferocious hurricane.

Westerlage knows weather can make for some terrific, dramatic television. The more a brewing snowstorm is hyped as Armageddon, the higher the ratings. The radar and satellite equipment provide special effects, ramping up viewers' emotions.

Clouds muster. Hatches are battened down.

And viewers stay tuned.

"We have advertisers who tell us, `When the weather gets to a certain level we want to advertise,'" says Westerlage, noting they'll be charged a premium for it.

But his firm, The Weather Channel, has never embellished its forecasts to lift ratings. "You want a long-term quality relationship with advertisers," he says.

Ian Rutherford, executive director of the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, says his organization does not monitor the voracity of television and radio broadcasts. But it does have an endorsement program and he believes broadcasters endorsed by the society "would ethically not yield to any pressure to alter their forecasts."

Weather forecasters do not need to be meteorologists, Rutherford says. He thinks most trained meteorologists would not be good at presenting the weather, because they would tend to get bogged down in the complicated science and that would turn viewers off.

"It is definitely an art to make a good weather presentation."

McBean wonders if so much of our fascination with weather is connected to our growing fear of global warming.

There is the day-to-day, need-to-know weather and there's the big picture, notes McBean. Perhaps our interest in weather extremes – "the rains in Vancouver, the fires in Kelowna and Prairie droughts" – fuel our end-of-the-world fears about melting ice caps.

McBean has seen the profession of weather forecasting move from respected meteorologist Percy Saltzman and his famous chalk to the modern-day stations that employ teams of experts and expensive arsenals of forecasting technology. (Saltzman was Canada's face of weather reporting on the CBC from 1952 to 1982. According to his official website, "each night when Percy finished his frantic three-minute weather blast, the map and he were coated in a thick cloud of chalk dust.")

With Saltzman gone, Environment Canada senior climatologist Phillips has a do-it-yourself solution to finding a reliable forecaster.

"Keep a scoreboard," he says.

Track the successes and failures of various stations. Over the course of time, find the weather source that seems most reliable. And then just ignore all the other Chicken Little forecasting.