SNOW...It's all some people hear

By: Dan Bickford | News Channel 7
Published: November 25, 2008 | 0 Comments | Post a Comment

We've had a few instances already this year of gusty northwest winds moving in behind a cold front, pushing moisture up the slopes of the mountains along the North Carolina/Tennessee border, and setting off some accumulating snow. In these weather patterns, much of the snow is limited to higher elevations and in areas close to that border...with lesser amounts of snow in the lower elevations and in areas farther south. Occasionally, we'll get some stray flurries into the Upstate in such a situation, but usually nothing of any substance. To the other extreme, we can see locally heavy snow on some mountain tops, while Upstate counties sit in nothing but sunshine.

All of this can make explaining the weather a somewhat lengthy process in our weathercasts. A reason: we need to be specific. While the "headlines" may shout SNOW!, we have to be careful to point out where that is expected to occur...for example, only in the mountains near the Tennessee border, with sunshine for the Upstate. For the most part, I like to think the Storm Team does a very good job in getting that idea across.

But saying SNOW in the South does a funny thing. Just mentioning that word can have a strange, mystical effect, causing some people's minds to immediately blot out anything that is said immediately afterward.

We see it in phone calls and emails: "Someone told me we're supposed to see snow in {fill in your favorite Upstate city}...when is it going to happen?" And we have the duty of telling our inquirer that their friend is mistaken...and they must have gotten their weather information from another, much less trusted weather source. But often, no forecast I know of has said anything about snow getting outside any particular areas...like the mountains in this example.

Therefore, it seems obvious that something in the word SNOW causes people to not hear any following line. It's similar to that line in a movie that is spoken right after the real funny line...no one hears it amidst the laughter.

I'm sure there's funding available somewhere for a study into this phenomena...there would be some dairies or breadmakers that might be interested in the results.