A Weather Story

This is a breaking news story I made up (for the most part) last summer during hurricane season.  My niece, Lynn, mentioned her sick obsession with the Weather Channel’s Jim Cantori.  She joked, “I can’t rest when I’m worried about where the heck Jim is. I worry about him during storm season.”  She figured he’d be poking his finger into the eye of the hurricane.  That same day I read an actual news article in the “strange news stories” section of my homepage.  Combining the two dissimilar stories made sense to me.  But then voting Republican in the last  presidential election made sense to me, too.  Anyway, here is the silly result.

Monday, August 28, 2006BEIJING – A woman in Hohhot, the capital of north China’s Inner Mongolia region, crashed her car while giving her dog a driving lesson, the official Xinhua News Agency said Monday. Several minutes later, in a shocking turn of events, both cars involved were damaged a second time by American meteorologist Jim Cantori when he inexplicably plummeted from the sky onto the accident scene.Onlookers described seeing “a flying American shoot out of the clouds like a bottle rocket.” Cantori ,who had last been seen by coworkers outside his Key West, Florida motel, nosedived onto the cars, his fall broken by the distraught dog.No serious injuries were reported.”I was outside checking on Ernesto’s movements when I lost my grip on a rotund makeup girl and got caught in an updraft. Before I knew it, I was swept into a flock of confused Canadian geese,” explained the weatherman whose hair was messed up but appeared in good shape, despite a dogbite. “I didn’t realize hurricane winds were that strong! It was an exciting, yet terrifying experience. Wow, I’ll never make fun of Al Roker again.”The woman, identified only be her surname, Li, said her dog “was fond of crouching on the steering wheel and often watched her drive,” according to Xinhua.”She thought she would let the dog ‘have a try’ while she operated the accelerator and brake,” the report said. “They did not make it far before crashing into an oncoming car.” Asked about the the famous flying weatherman who landed on her dog, Li responded, “I don’t care who the American is! I would have bitten him in the ass, too!”Xinhua did not say what kind of dog or vehicles were involved but Li and Jim paid for repairs.