My friends, the sky is falling. There is nothing you can do to halt this horrible thing, but I’m going to trumpet the news in my best alarmist voice. I’ll trumpet in the morning, again at noon and maybe three times between dinner and bed.

The sky is falling in the form of snow and rain, sleet and hail and my God, what would you do without the Chicken Little media feeding you the forecast in dramatic, up-to-the minute reports?

You’d survive, that’s what. But don’t try telling that to us media types. Especially the TV folks, who go through army style training to perfect expressions of deep concern, voices that tremble on cue and sweeping hand gestures to verify the existence of mud puddles and snowbanks.

The television people have become enamored of all forms of weather. They’d date the wind if they could. So obsessed are they with bringing you their forecasts, non-weather related news has become an inconvenience.

“A mile-wide asteroid fell on Washington, D.C., this afternoon and the nation’s leadership is in shambles. But first, our news team is on local streets where 2 inches of fresh snow has fallen and more is expected by morning. Jim? How’s it looking out there?”

Jim is downtown, feathered hair tousled by the wind, station logo proudly displayed on the navy blue windbreaker. He’s out there and it’s snowing sideways around him, so you know this is a vital report. But before he gets down to it, Jim will tell you breathlessly that he’s bringing you the latest weather predictions first. And not only first, but most accurately. And not only accurately, but with handy stats and numbers crucial to your survival.

See? Jim is pressing fingers to his earpiece this very moment to get those numbers. Note the expression of alarm as he listens. He learned that in TV weather boot camp.

I blame the media for the absolute sissification of our society. Once-sturdy and brave people have become sniveling paranoids, utterly dependent on weather reports. Take my friend Randy Baril, whose name I will omit here for fear of embarrassing my friend, Randy Baril.

Randy is by most measures a hardy sort, seldom fearful and adaptable to any situation. And yet several times each week, he steps into the newsroom looking pale and troubled.

“Did you hear? They’re saying another storm is coming a week from tomorrow. My God! I’m going to have to get more salt!”

Another victim of weather mind control. I suggest this, but he won’t hear of it. He nods and swallows the last of his Maine grit. “Oh, they know. They have big maps, satellite images, fancy pointers. Jim knows what he’s talking about, all right.”

Technology, there’s your problem. In the right hands, it’s salvation. Real meteorologists can track the hell out of a weather system and raise alarm when conditions warrant it. But they pass that knowledge onto news people and there you have it. Chicken Littles on three local stations and another handful writing for the paper.

Snow isn’t snow, rain isn’t rain in the hands of the reporter on a meteorological bender. It’s a weather event. An event! Like that asteroid that fell on Washington.

Only, the weather event is better than that because journalists feel like they have completely mastered it. They can tell you when it’s coming, where it will be the worst and how long it will last. Spoon-fed such precise knowledge, they will scream it at you, lest you forget where you heard it first. Nevermind that a good half of the life-changing blizzards they predict instead come as dustings of snow you can blow off your windshield with one strong breath.

Mind control. People didn’t start fighting over batteries and bottled water for each 3-inch duster until the TV people began advising them to. Grizzled newspaper types weren’t weather weenies until they saw how fixedly the audience paid attention to the TV weenies. And on we marched into sissification.

In the spring, half of your TV news report and a good chunk of precious newsprint will be dedicated to matters of rain and possible flooding. In the summer, grave warnings of approaching heat waves where temperatures are expected to soar into the 80s. In the fall, grim reports of encroaching cold and playful updates on the foliage.

“Bring a warm coat for that foliage tour, Traci.”

“Will do, Jim. I won’t leaf home without one.”

Somebody kill me.

But winter is the worst. Winter is a Dionysian orgy for news teams who handle weather. And by news teams, I mean editors. Because I’ve got to believe that at least some of the TV dorks are like me. They would rather stuff slush into their shorts and stab their eyes with icicles than report on the weather. But editors like a sure thing. Why send a reporter out looking for something fresh when the weather is right there, waiting to be examined from every angle?

My long-suffering friends, I suggest that we’d survive the miseries of winter with old-style gusto were it not for the news people goosing us with reports and inspiring panic around the clock. Blow-dried Jim and his ilk are effectively introducing a wimp gene into the parade of evolution (if you believe in that sort of thing) and if we don’t resist, future generations will run away and hide in caves at the first sign of precipitation. It’s going to snow, pull the kids out of school and board your windows. It’s going to rain, head to high ground. Heat is coming so fill the backyard pool with sun block and stay submerged until it’s over.

This is my apology for the meteorological bombardment, and you heard it here first.

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can e-mail him at [email protected].