I love stories like this one from Tampabay’s 10: “Can winter tornado disasters occur in Florida? Hellfuckshitzyea!” Actually I’m not sure if the hellfuck part was in the original story or not, but I’m pretty sure it was.

The gist of the story goes something like this:

1. Actual emergency occurs nowhere near here
2. News organizations everywhere play/write/report the shit out of the story
3. News organizations everywhere run out of angles actually related to said emergency
4. News organizations everywhere try to make it sound like said emergency is incredibly likely to occur in our own backyard

Simple, eh? I think that is like page 4 of Journalamizing for Dummies. Sherry Ray takes it a step further by tying in some extremely abnormal occurrences like:

On January 6, 1998 portions of central Florida were declared a federal disaster after damage from high winds, tornadoes and floods ravished the area. A month later, more deadly tornadoes … killed 42 people and caused millions of dollars in property damage across the state … the deadly tornado that killed at least 20 people in Lake County and caused an estimated $80 million in damage in neighboring Volusia County (in 2007).

Scope out the image below. It basically shows that between 1950 and 1998, there had been less than 1 tornado (F3 or above) in the majority of the state. Well, excepting the Twister ride at Universal of course.

In other words, barring the few deadly storms Sherry Ray quotes, it is more than highly unlikely that we face any danger like the storms in the Midwest. You gotta love the news. Just think how much harder their jobs would be if they actually reported helpful, non-sensational, non-biased information.