After last weekend’s 100-car pileup on icy roads outside Grand Rapids, Michigan, most Americans—myself included—were on high alert for any sign of weather-related dangers in our own backyards.
Enter TV newscasters hyping the “Monster Winter Storm of 2026,” billed as likely to plunge a wide swath of the United States stretching from Las Vegas to New England with “catastrophic ice, snow and power outages, which are projected to be the worst stress on power grids dating back at least 15 years.” Dire special reports aired on local and network TV, scaring young and older viewers alike with visions of ice-covered tree limbs falling on cars and downing power lines, impacting 240-million people in over 40 states. Everyone from over-the-road truckers to casual drivers was cautioned to stay off roads and highways, which would become deadly as they were covered by freezing sleet and the dreaded black ice.
In Dallas-Ft Worth, where I live, residents followed the unofficial DFW rule: Any threat of .25-inches of ice equals a mandatory stampede to Walmart or Target to strip the entire produce department section right down to the studs. At midweek, I dropped by one grocery store where the beef counters had already been hollowed out…there literally wasn’t a single can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup available…and panicky shoppers were banging their carts into each other like a dystopian demolition derby.
But as President Ronald Reagan was fond of declaring, “You ain’t seen nothing yet”: at my local Walmart, I personally observed a desperate grandfather literally shoving his crying grandson up into the nearly empty refrigerated shelves to try and reach the last two cartons of eggs still available. It was like a scene right out of Nathanael West’s 1939 novel Day of the Locust.
The “Monster Storm” is still unfolding as this is written, and it may yet turn into the predicted cataclysmic disaster of Biblical proportions ballyhooed on TV.
But as of midday Saturday, it looks like yet another fizzled weather event, which really served no worthwhile purpose other than to knock anti-ICE kooks in Minneapolis off the networks for a few days.
Correspondents are now reduced to noting that “In Chicago today temperatures have plummeted to just 10-degrees…with dangerous wind chills.” (Imagine: the Windy City on the shores of Lake Michigan is actually experiencing freezing temperatures. In January!) One Dallas newscaster cheerily reminded viewers that while the sleet so far isn’t anywhere near what was predicted, “at least you now have plenty of toilet paper and tuna fish stocked up.” Comedy gold.
It has been so terrifying (not) in the DFW Metroplex that the annual Fort Worth livestock show and rodeo proceeded this weekend without skipping a beat.
Full disclosure: I’m no meteorologist and I don’t wish to be unkind to the men and women whose jobs are to keep us forewarned about approaching bad weather. But the detailed hysteria—including a 50-year model of overlapping weather patterns, including “European models converging as never before”—has sadly led many viewers to dismiss future Pinocchio updates, which may, indeed, endanger their lives.
All this reminds me of a column once written by Richard Roeper in the Chicago Sun-Times…detailing a typical TV news bulletin. I’ll paraphrase:
ANCHOR: “So how are Chicagoans handling this surprising cold and snow in January? Let’s go live to our reporter on Lakeshore Drive.”
REPORTER: “Well, Walter, it’s very cold out here, as you can see by my rosy cheeks as I stand next to this snowbank next to a gas station. Customers here are buying coffee and filling their gas tanks since, well, it is really quite chilly.”
ANCHOR: “Okay. Wow! Stay safe out there, and thanks. Now here’s a Channel 2 live shot of a few cars driving slowly on the slippery roads. Because it is so icy here in January…”
Roeper penned that in the early 1990’s and sadly, it does not have to be updated in any way to parrot what we are being inundated with here in 2026. “Remain calm, stay tuned, and please be sure your pets and elderly neighbors are taken care of in this crisis, etc. etc.”
President Donald J. Trump, along with our greatest scientists and military leaders are currently in talks designed to create a “Golden Dome” missile defense system, which—like Israel’s famous Iron Dome—would protect Americans from the danger of incoming missiles launched from China, Russia, Iran or other hostile nations. That’s exactly the kind of creative leadership we voted for when electing President Trump to another term in the White House.
But what we could also urgently use is a “Broadcast Dome” to protect our nation from being crippled by climate-change fueled TV reports which panic viewers into cleaning out all the milk and bread in their local supermarkets before huddling in their homes awaiting allegedly cataclysmic weather events that essentially boil down to little more than two immutable facts: it is freezing cold each winter and sizzingly hot every summer.
Tom Tradup is V.P./News & Talk Programming at Dallas-based Salem Radio Network. He can be reached at ttradup@srnradio.com