Comments on: Goodbye "Snowmageddon XIX", hello "Gandolf"

By: allium

allium — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:56:00 +0000

Nope!

By: Alecks Kim

Alecks Kim — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:37:00 +0000

It means literally, “wand elf” in Old Norse. Since English and its previous forms and influences are used to represent Westron (“Samwise Gamgee” is in actuality Banazir Galbasi), it shows that some men of Middle Earth started calling this mysterious wizard “the elf with the staff” because that’s what they assumed he was. Tolkien probably thought it incongruous that a Wand Elf would ever associate with dwarves, and wanted to invent a plausible backstory. This same inventiveness shows in his imagining of the “original” “Hey Fiddle Diddle”.

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 23:01:00 +0000

Is YOUR family safe from Beorning-ized killer bees?

By: allium

allium — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 22:44:00 +0000

“…and we can expect snow flurries from the north gusting to twenty leagues per sandglass, along with the foul voice of Saruman. Chains or the feather-light grace of an elf are required for travelling above the snow line. Coming up after the break – Rivendell issues a lembas recall. How will it affect YOU?”

By: Antinous / Moderator

Antinous / Moderator — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:53:00 +0000

Next up:

Éala, Éarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended

By: Paul Renault

Paul Renault — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:28:00 +0000

Oy vey! What next? Are they going to start naming heavy rainfalls?

Jeepers, arount here, snowstorms are pretty common. Two years ago, we had a 15cm+ snowstorm every week (Really!) for about two months.

By: roye

roye — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 21:00:00 +0000

The Weather Channel bought Weather Underground in July. I believe the forecasts remain separate. I’m partial to NWS or wunderground.

Also, wether underground has really cool historical radar data. You can go back and look at the tracks and cells of storms, and watch their animation. Also, their WunderMap is an amazing teaching tool for my kids. They love to pick out locations on the map and watch the movement of the spring storms as the approach. It’s really cool to use full screen.

http://www.wunderground.com/wundermap/

By: monitorhead

monitorhead — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:45:00 +0000

Man… I’ve already had enough issues with work sick days because of fearful newscasts saying I’m going to get a blizzard in south Minneapolis suburbs.. and cancel my 45 minute drive.. only to get a dusting of snow. More weather fear/terror headed our way. ick.

By: IronEdithKidd

IronEdithKidd — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 20:24:00 +0000

Their forecasts and their radar suck. I use wunderground. It’s much more accurate (and based locally, not that I’m shamelessly plugging or anything).

By: Charles Choi

Charles Choi — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:38:00 +0000

A winter storm named Gandolf will clearly allow new “Gandolf is Coming” Lord of the Rings – Game of Thrones mashups.

By: Saltine

Saltine — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:32:00 +0000

Oh no! Give William Morris his props! AT least this particular English student, though a fan of Browning, knows Gandolf from Morris. The Well at World’s End is, btw, available at Project Gutenberg. And I highly recommend reading Morris, especially Dream of John Ball and News from Nowhere.

By: franko

franko — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:29:00 +0000

looking forward to winter storm Ungoliant.

By: RussellChaplin

RussellChaplin — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:26:00 +0000

It’s about time they named the winter storms after the wizards that created them.

By: huskerdont

huskerdont — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:11:00 +0000

The weather channel and weather.com are more about sensationalism that trivializes weather than about giving good weather information. It’s not surprising that they’d do this unilaterally, without input from the NWS or anyone else. I already take all their forecasts with a grain of salt (okay, more so than from even regular forecasters). This will just make their forecasts harder to believe.

By: strugglngwriter

strugglngwriter — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 19:03:00 +0000

This makes me grumpy (note that’s not Grumpy, from Disney fame; that’s right this change does not turn me into a surly, cartoon dwarf). Get off my lawn, Weather Channel, and take your stupid naming of weather occurrences with you.

By: Maggie Koerth-Baker

Maggie Koerth-Baker — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:53:00 +0000

Fair enough. I’m just making assumptions about why on Earth The Weather Channel would name the storm after the 19th century book, when everybody who knows the name Gandolf knows it from Lord of the Rings.

By: OldBrownSquirrel

OldBrownSquirrel — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:47:00 +0000

Tolkien got the names of Gandalf and all the dwarves [sic] from “The Hobbit” from traditional sources. His estate has no more exclusive rights to that name than Disney has exclusive rights to the name Hercules.

By: chenille

chenille — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:47:00 +0000

Gandalf is one of the dwarves from the Norse Eddas, along with Thorin, Durin, and so on. It would be very strange to have the names restricted.

By: James Fehlinger

James Fehlinger — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:41:00 +0000

> Please note that this is Gandolf, not Gandalf. The former is a
> character in The Well at the World’s End. . .

Or, more famously among college English students, the narrator’s nemesis in Robert Browning’s dramatic poem “The Bishop Orders His Tomb at St. Praxed’s Church”.

By: Dan Hibiki

Dan Hibiki — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 18:29:00 +0000

The Q storm will suddenly form a tornado in the middle of Kansas and kill two completely human humans… nothing odd about the humans. Yup, just a bunch of humans that possess no special powers and definitely don’t belong to a god like race of aliens.