Anyone who has lived here long enjoyed a good laugh Tuesday afternoon when school was let out, borough offices were closed and the night’s assembly meeting was cancelled in response to about four inches of slush.
Four middle-aged women out jogging along Main Street at lunchtime, laughing and chatting, made it abundantly clear that no one would die in Tuesday’s “storm.”
But the weather was apparently more severe up the highway, and I’m not second-guessing the manager’s decision to shut down the town.
A snow day is all very exciting stuff. But perhaps it has become too exciting to too many of us.
There was a time when Alaskans expected Alaskan weather. They covered their firewood and bought large shovels and wore heavy boots. When snow fell, they went to work and sent their kids off to school. Children got excited about snow. Adults added it to their to-do lists.
Somehow, snow has become another modern hazard, like the Zika virus, gluten and Sharia law. These days, high-ranking borough officials copy off forecasts of stormy weather and send them out via e-mail and Facebook.
“Big Storm Coming!” they all seem to say. “Town imperiled. Seek high ground. Protect your womenfolk.” In no time, people you hardly know are asking if you’re ready for what’s coming and you’re wondering whether you should stock up on milk and toilet paper at Howsers.
How this came about is a mystery. When I arrived here, I was dazzled by how much snow would fall, to the point of writing poetic stories about snow depth, plowing issues, people stuck in berms. I was gently chided: “Relax, kid. You’re in Alaska.”
Even in November 2005, when the town was chopped in three by floods that washed away chunks of Haines Highway, Mud Bay and Lutak roads and nearly a few homes, I cannot remember such a state of high alarm at forecasts.
Maybe there were some warnings on the radio, but people figured things out.
A source of our new madness, I think, may lie with the way we now see the world through Facebook and the 24-hour news cycle. We are a society that ricochets from one sensation to another, and we enjoy the ride.
On Facebook, everything is headline news. “I was promoted!” “I got a new cat!” “I had a bowel movement!” No news is too small for social media. And so much of what’s posted there as news is so fabricated, questionable or mysteriously sourced that a bulletin from the National Weather Service predicting a dangerous storm arrives like the Word of God.
Cable news networks are probably also to blame. By finding regional or local news events and blowing them into national disasters, the networks have conditioned us to worry a lot about things that affect us little. “A tornado in Texas!” “Child goes missing in Maine!” “Teacher has triplets during recess!” It’s no wonder that we now think a snowstorm in Alaska in winter is alarming.
The media, to which we are now tuned continually through our gadgets, feed us a constant diet of sensational items, allowing only the most fearful ones to make much of a dent: “Islamic refugees!” “Child abducted!” “Polar ice cap melting!”
To these we have added our own good, local terror: “Winter storm warning!”
For balance, maybe what we need is a whole new generation of network news stations and social media that continually reinforce this message: “Don’t be distracted. Relax. Go back to work. Everything is going to be fine.”