Winter Storm What's-His-Name

Another winter storm coming into to town tonight. And what's the deal with naming winter storms these days? Since when do winter storms need names? We name hurricances cuz they're really big and do lots of damage and kill people. Winter storms might be big, but they don't do a lot of damage, and they don't kill a lot of people. So why do we name them? What's next? Are we gonna start naming thunderstorms? How about naming every single tornado that forms? After all, tornados kill more people than blizzards do. What kind of moronic thinking is this? Actually, I think I know what this is all about. 24 hour news. When you have to fill 24 hours with news seven days a week, 52 weeks a year, then you have to have something to fill it with. To that end, events that wouldn't have merited national coverage 40 years ago receive full court press today. So a winter storm in New England that you never would have heard about in California when I was a kid is now the top headline all over the country, with its own name and all kinds of talking heads delivery their dire warnings about how deadly the storm is going to be. Thing is - they rarely measure up to the hype. They can't possibly. I guess it makes a lot of folks happy to know that the mediocre storm that's coming their way has a name. But it just bores me.