It snowed; Get over it!

The recent snowstorm called to mind my friend Cindy from Pennsylvania, who once yelled at my television screen during the zillionth weather update, "It snowed; get over it!"

Her comment got me thinking about news coverage of big weather, how much of it is really necessary, and why some of us like to watch it.

The coverage starts days in advance, when the weather person tells us a "major winter storm" is coming and we are going to be absolutely smothered in snow before the clock strikes midnight. This weather person takes no pains to hide his or her excitement, clearly implying, "You're going to see A LOT of ME in the next few days!" (Newspaper predictions can't hope to live up to this, because they are toneless.) Of course, we don't really mind the buildup, because it gives us time to empty the supermarket shelves of bread and milk, fill the bird feeders, and load up the front porch with wood.

Once the snow actually starts falling, we see regular updates from reporters wearing Indiana Jones hats (despite the fact that they serve little purpose beyond the sartorial) and ski jackets, standing outdoors in knee-deep snow and subfreezing temperatures. The stories they bring at this stage are important, concerning road conditions, the movement of the weather front, and how folks with four-wheel-drive vehicles can assist those who need to get to medical facilities for kidney dialysis.

A particularly important service our TV friends perform is telling us where we DONÕT have to go. The recital of postponements and closings, though essential, can become tiresome. When I was little and reporters READ the whole list, they got to play "synonym scramble," a game sportscasters play every day. How many synonyms are there for "win?" For "closed?"

Now, TV stations just run the list across the bottom of the screen -- sometimes during regular programming, which is then reduced to a smaller letterbox. (This is especially annoying if you're trying to see movie credits.) Another disadvantage of this technique is that you're can't hear the closings while you're in the kitchen making snow cream.

A story about a delay spawned one of my favorite all-time headlines: "Ski Competition Postponed Due to Snow." As Dave Barry would say, "I am not making this up."

The huge front-page headline the first day after the snow will say something about a record: "Winter Storm Dumps Record Snowfall" was recycled during the mid-1990s.

Of course, we wonÕt actually see this headline for several more days, when the newspaper carrier, a less hearty breed than the mail carrier, finally navigates the plowed roads. Circulation delays may be reported, generally in a small box on Page One. This, I concede to my friend Cindy, is relatively useless news, as until I GET my paper, I canÕt read the notice anyway. The images on this first day are of cars buried up to their mirrors and snow-covered local landmarks.

After the last snowflake has settled and Jeeps begin to crawl the highways again, the news gives way to features, and the less useful items begin to dominate. We learn which are the best hills for sledding in Roanoke and see pictures of children skimming along, accompanied by large, furry dogs. ItÕs hard to tell whoÕs smiling more -- the dogs or the children. I also remember a story about a local couple forced by weather to spend their honeymoon at Hotel Roanoke. Such features always make me suspect that the reporters are snowbound themselves and conducting interviews by telephone from home. Once, for example, my friend Beth Macy wrote in The Roanoke Times about what she cooked while snowbound.

By the time these "frosty features" appear, we may be too busy to read them, having returned to the other activities the snow disrupted, as it becomes clearer that we will not have an excuse for staying home much longer. The newspaper begins to come regularly, with headlines like "Digging Out" and "On the Road Again." The headlines shrink with the snowline, and the newspaper soaks up the drip from the bottoms of our boots.

My friend Cindy might be right that some of the snowstorm news should be shoveled off our TV screens, but the media's attention to the weather serves an important purpose: it reminds us that there's still a whole world out there under all the snow and that for just a few days, we're getting a break from it.

(Of course, when my friend Cindy reads this column, she'll say . . . .)