The Factor of Scary

I thought I'd elaborate a bit on my theory of weather forecasts.

Call me cynical, but weather reporting is all about fear. The more scared people are, the more they'll watch the local news and the less likely they'll be to do dangerous, scary things like, drive, walk, and go outside, all of which potentially remove them from their television. This idea was impressed on me in New York, where an inch of snow seems to send the news media into a tizzy.

In engineering, there is a concept of "factor of safety", where, if your bridge is expected to carry 100 cars at a time, you build it so it can carry 300 cars at a time, just to be safe. That would be a factor of safety of three.

I think in meteorology school, students are taught to use a factor of scary, with a nominal value of two.