THIS HAS BEEN a tough winter for local TV weather people, given the prolonged absence of the White Death from our skies.
The White Death, of course, is snow. And nothing gets a TV weather person adrenalized like the chance to make a big deal out of snow, even if it's only an inch or two coming.
Head bobbing up and down, eyes blazing feverishly, breath coming in tiny, excited bursts, like a Scotch terrier about to launch himself at a screen door, the TV weather person can barely contain himself when he bounces onto the set with snow in the forecast.
As soon as the anchor throws it to him, his manicured hands are flying from the sleeves of his Bill Blass blazer, pointing at the national radar map, the high-temperature map, the cloud cover map, which are all telling him the same thing.
"Oh, we're gonna get it!" he says with barely restrained glee. "The only question is: How much?"
There is an enormous sense of power that comes with being a TV weather person in Baltimore this time of year.
Utter the word "snow" and panicked citizens stampede into supermarkets, elbowing 89-year-old great-grandmothers aside for milk, yoking wheezing asthmatics off their feet and stealing their bread, snatching rolls of toilet paper from the tiny hands of startled elementary school students.
Utter the word "snow" and entire TV newsrooms are mobilized into action.
Soon reporters in hooded parkas and scarves stand poised with their microphones in front of deserted expressway ramps, waiting to breathlessly announce that the first flakes of the White Death are falling.
Grizzled videographers stand ready to record municipal snowplows roaring to life, salt spreaders rumbling down highways, harried homeowners with newly purchased red shovels from Home Depot digging their way out of this wintry hell.
And if all goes well -- no, if it's a perfect day, video-wise -- someone gets footage of the old guy with the Orioles cap and bad ticker keeling over as he helps his neighbor push his '89 Pontiac LeMans out of a snowdrift.
But none of this happens until the local weather person, eyes big as manhole covers, spittle flying as the words tumble from his mouth, announces: "Snow on the way, folks!"
But this winter, sadly, there has been no White Death for the weather people to report.
