Fail Video Proves Weather Can Be A Really Challenge. And A Jokester

This dog is unnecessarily dog paddling through
not very deep floodwaters 

One of Fail Army's YouTube videos focuses one of their fail compiliations on the weather.

Yes, as the video that was dropped on March 1 attests, the weather can be at times difficult, to say the least.

Some of my favorites you'll see in the video below are the guy challenged severely by the sloping, slick ice driveway, the cat trying to claw its way out of a snow-blocked doorway, and the army of trash cans descending a hill during a flash flood.

I think my favorite, around 6:43 in, and you'll see more yourself, is the guy carrying the dog in his arms as he walks through ankle deep flood water.

When he walks, the dog, sensing the water three feet below him, does the dog paddle. When the guy stops walking, the dog stops "swimming." It's hysterical.

Here's the whole video:

For Those Challenged By Winter, These People Are Doing Worse Than You

Don't shovel snow off your roof like this guy.  

Winter is certainly a challenge.

As the video in this post shows, some people manage winter worse than others.

If you're in New England, you might want to take the nine minutes to watch the video, in order to distract you from your sore back from shoveling, the lack of a view out your window because of the snowbanks pressed against it, and from the lack of hope that spring will ever arrive.

A couple of observations about the video before we get into it:

People really don't have much of an appreciation for thin ice, do they?

I feel really sorry for the pig on ice you see in the video. And for the toddler in the pink snowsuit who  discovers ice, and then its drawbacks.

And I really feel sorry for the guy in front of the brick building, around seven minutes in, who tries to get out of his car.

For your viewing pleasure, here's what's wrong with winter:

An Outage Outrage: National Weather Service Warning System Fails Amid East Coast Tornadoes

For about a half hour late Thursday afternoon, as tornadic supercells, vicious hailstorms and terrible winds threatened millions of people along the East Coast, the National Weather Service warning system failed.  

A semi is blown over after a possible tornado
 Thursday along Interstate 88 northwest of Albany, N.Y. 

That meant few people could get timely warnings.

Also radar images from the National Weather Service were down, so people were stymied at tracking severe storms and supercells roaming the Northeast.

Capital Weather Gang says the outage lasted from 4:06 to 4:37 p.m. Thursday, during the height of the severe weather.

Operations were also affected around Denver, which was also under a tornado warning.

Capital Weather Gang also obtained a National Weather Service email detailing the problem.  "It appears that all NWS warnings did not properly disseminate during the outage, and significant severe weather was occurring during the outage," according to the e-mail.

The problem was apparently caused by an ongoing upgrade to a computer firewall.

This fiasco raised a lot of questions about the lack of redundancy in the National Weather Service's warning system.

It's true private forecasters, such as the Weather Channel, AccuWeather, and WeatherNation can spread warnings, but you really need a truly national, non-business, government agency to issue consistent warnings during dangerous weather.

Plus, most media outlets rely upon the National Weather Service to provide warnings. Most people it seems, tune into radio and TV when dangerous weather threatens, so National Weather Service alerts are crucial.

Why doesn't the National Weather Service have the right resources to do this?  I'm sure a lot of people were caught out in the big hailstorms in Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Maryland and Delaware today because they didn't get warnings.

The scary thing is, a likely tornado, that was causing damage, was heading toward the Albany, New York metro region when the outage happened. The storm weakened before reaching Albany, which is a good thing.

I wonder if anybody got hurt because of this situation. Or worse, will this kind of failure happen again when a big tornado is bearing down on a city? Will people die because of system failures at the National Weather Service?

I can only imagine the intense frustration among the excellent meteorologists at the National Weather Service over this issue.

Meteorologist and Slate writer Eric Holthaus said there have several, less serious computer glitches and failures in the last six weeks.

Holthaus wrote:  "Outages like this can't continue. The National Weather Service should immediately implement redundancy into their computer systems to ensure the people they serve - us- aren't kept in the dark when dangerous weather approaches. Until then, the system in place is an embarrassment to the diligent scientists that work there."

I couldn't agree more, Eric.