I took this screen shot and sent it to Miss M who replied, “Ha! That’s pretty bitchy.” She did not realize Joel was a meteorologist. There were a couple of replies to Joel’s tweet, one from a newcomer to Mississippi who admitted she was not yet familiar with the state’s 83 county locations. She thanked him. Fair enough.

The point that one should be able to locate oneself on a map seems fairly obvious to me. I will admit that occasionally I am unfamiliar with where a particular town or county is, and so I found two much better maps of Mississippi, printed them, and just for sh*^s and giggles, laminated them.

That said…

My quibble is, of course, that it is not a meteorologist’s job to keep me safe. [Okay. I have quibbles with the grammar but I’ll set them aside.] My safety is my responsibility. A successful meteorologist provides the information I need– in a timely fashion and with the relevant meteorological analysis– to act in accordance with the current and future weather circumstances.

How not to prepare? Trust your safety to someone else.

My safety is my responsibility. How does one begin to shoulder this responsibility? Thinking about the weather stuff I have used and accumulated, I’ll be posting** my suggestions about what one needs to acquire information about the weather.

There are two categories of information acquisition. The first is “Tell me.” Someone else is looking at the raw weather data, analyzing and assessing it and other relevant information, and telling you what’s going on. You act accordingly. The second is “I’ll see for myself.”

*No dig on Joel. He’s a competent meteorologist.

**I had originally launched into “Tell me” below the fold, followed by “I’ll see for myself” but decided it was better as three separate posts. Bear in mind the post title, “Gathering Information on Bad Weather.” I’ll not be talking about other preparedness stuff.