Ditto for immigrants from warm climates. Too many stressed drivers trying to be in the same places. Last weekend, in desperate search of the requisite video of a reporter standing in white stuff, stations sent crews to Pennsylvania or Western Maryland. And, Mergen agrees, TV hype has a powerfully disturbing effect. The graphics are getting more lurid.
Bad weather sells.
Mergen says Washington is particularly susceptible to weather freakouts because we fancy ourselves masters of our own fate. Snow asserts its own agenda, and that makes it a threat. But Mergen's greatest contribution is his ability to think of snow in blizzard-size thoughts. We are all actors in a play of our own design, an elaborate, unspoken scheme in which we pretend to be terribly discomfited but actually have a whale of a time. Paper products were flying out.