If you’ve watched any local TV news over the past year or so you may have noticed a number of these stations have decided to double down on weather forecasting. I would imagine this is happening no matter where you live because when you first saw the anchors start to stand up to deliver the news, anchors were standing up all over the country; no doubt they all use the same consultant. So some consultant must’ve told these TV people they have to invest in weather vehicles and boy have they. Here’s a partial list of some of the rolling hardware: The Doppler Donganater 1000; this bad boy can detect the formation of a funnel cloud within 100 miles, in fact its instrument is so sensitive it can pick up a funnel cake kiosk in any shopping mall nearby or even someone funneling money. The Weather Whipper 2000; this be-atch seats one reporter comfortably in the back who will be sipping hot chocolate or lemonade, depending on the season, while you look at a live shot from the camera hooked to the windshield, “ever seen rain before Timmy or a grown man naked?”, that’s if someone has their shades up when the Whipper is cruising through your hood. The Haboob 3000; this bad-ass was designed to confront Mother Nature and say to her “you want a piece of me, well bring it” and as long as Ms. Nature doesn’t shoot a 2X4 through the windshield like a missile the audience should get some great shots of tin roofs blowing across the highway. But all these SUVs on steroids pale in comparison to The Mother F’er 5000; this is where the rubber meets the road- until it leaves the road. This cloud-sucker on wheels has the capability to actually go up the ass end of a tornado and show you all the debris and livestock swirling around inside God’s ugly joke on trailer parks. MF 5000 will then put itself gently down on the ground and head back to the station into the garage that looks like a Mad Max: Fury Road U-Stor-It. Even Immortan Joe would be impressed, right before he got his face ripped off. And then the newscast would end with a funny YouTube vid of an animal doing something cute and the male anchor who’s from a country we’ve never been to and the female anchor with big earrings will bid you a good night. And it will be. All this for maybe 4 days of severe weather a year.

Peace,
Garry