To think the media are scaremongering with storms?

[CableCar]

I am genuinely asking because I am quite scared of storms and have always had a bit of anxiety around extreme weather... But I can't help but feel that the media is really jumping on every storm with big headlines about how terrible it is going to be... Is that going on? I know storms are important to be aware of, as you need to keep safe if weather conditions are extreme. And I of course have compassion on those who are severely affected by storms. However, it feels like there is a lot of drama and anxiety stirred up in me that I never used to experience around the weather. Has the media just sensationalised everything now storms are given names etc?

The tabloid press always big up bad weather to fill column inches. If you want an objective view, go to the Met Office website.

I take the 20 feet of snow headlines with a pinch of salt as they're always based on exaggeration but the storm headlines are usually based on actual weather warnings and if you don't see the problem with them I guess you don't live somewhere on one of the main storm paths, high up or near the coast that tends to get a severe battering.

don't read the news for anything.

Met office.

Named storms, bomb cyclones, atmospheric rivers and such have been there for decades.
Lately, the weather has been tracked more (so more info coming in);, there are more communication methods, and the weather has been quite dramatic, making more warnings necessary.

In the last few years we have lost a lot of lives here in BC due to the weather (600+ in a heat dome,) plus flood and forest fire victims.
Globally, more people are been impacted by more weather events, and it shows know signs of stopping.

Where do you live? If it's the UK then it's pretty much always going to be ok

My Alexa pings so often with weather warnings that I'm completely desensitised now. It's getting silly naming every time there's lightning. Surely this should only be if there's something exceptional happening

I'm grateful for them. They're updated often enough that I can prepare properly/relax. Maybe you're not in an area adversely impacted by wind or flooding @CableCar.

They are certainly not scaremongering.

It depends on sooo many things… We’re on the coast in South West, and no 2 storms are the same. Now it’s not even a storm but wind direction makes it catastrophic - have neighbors rattan furniture blown into our garden. Storm Darragh had opposite wind direction so we were actually sheltered by the landscape and it was much calmer.

How would you like storms reported ? The weather is the weather...

It’s the slowest news week of the year. Nothing to worry about

That was what I was getting at... Tabloid press bigging it up playing on my anxiety. I would just like objective, accurate weather warnings that are practical. Thanks to those of you who agreed the met office is the best place to go and papers will always want to make headlines / get clicks.
Our house is vulnerable to some winds... We've had our roof damaged by one storm and multiple times our fence has broken. I think it's those experiences that play on my anxiety about if something may go wrong. Occasionally trees fall on cars near where we live too, so storms do have an impact where we are. But thankfully not the rising water levels. Thanks all.

100%. They seem to give any rainstorm a name these days.

Don't rely on the tabloids for anything factual. A myriad of weather information sites exist. Why not use those?
It's like using Google for health advice, every bampot will have an opinion, 99.99% of which will be wrong.

Not really, a couple of weeks ago my part of the UK was absolutely battered by a weekend of high winds that did far more damage and caused far more power outages than any named storm in recent years, yet nothing at all in the media. Didn't even have a name.

As others have said use the met office site. The weather warnings are graded yellow, orange or red depending on severity and only cover certain areas. For me, orange (unusual) and red (rare) are when I start paying attention. If you click on any of the warnings on the map and scroll down you'll see a matrix of high impact versus liklihood. For example at the moment the snow warning later in the week is higher impact but low liklihood and I think the warning is likely to be refined as we get closer - snow is particularly hard to forecast.

I'd avoid the Daily Express headlines and just look at the Met Office, or even better the Weather section on MN!

The Express and similar are contemptible - they find the most obscure, pathetic weather organisation they can, seek out their most outrageous and unrealistic forecast - even if it's four weeks ahead - and present it as fact. Then all the bullshit local publications (Somerset Live etc) seize on it because drama generates clicks. And we get headlines screaming things like "200 mile snow bomb to SMASH into the UK with 8 foot drifts". If you go on the Met Office there is zero suggestion of any such thing.

The thing is with weather forecasting is that people are still very much in the "weather man" mentality, where they assume that forecasts are created by men poring over charts. And so you get a lot of scorn and outrage when "the weathermen" get it wrong. Forecasts are made by supercomputers and they are generated based on different models and different likelihoods. The weather in the UK is so hard to predict even a few hours out because of our geographical position. So we can be warned about the likelihood of strong winds heading our way, for example, but if the path of that particular storm is just 100 miles or so south or north, then its effects can be very different. Remember Storm Ciaran? The Welsh government shut schools based on the red warning, and it actually tracked over northern France and the Channel Islands - Wales was just "normal very windy" rather than "scary windy" (Ciaran was the storm where the woman's baby monitor filmed the windows blowing in and she and her baby had a lucky escape)

So basically what I'm rambling on about it that the media will do anything for clicks, and scared people click more.