CARL: This is Carl Drake, play-by-play commentator for NBS Broadcasting, coming at you live from the Action Weather Center for The Barometric Network.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. This is Tom Hicks, color commentator for NBS Broadcasting, and for those who are just joining us, Carl and I are filling in for the usual The Barometric Network anchors, Hank Swolemann and Bettina Karenagle, as Winter Storm Omega bears down upon the unsuspecting American south.

CARL: Hank is snowed in; on the last call I had with him he was trying to melt his way out of his garage with a blowtorch that his wife uses for flambeau.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, and Bettina does a mega-commute from her second home in Pasadena, which she is currently in the process of defending from a wildfire. Our latest update from Fire Storm Sigma will come after the break, but for those of you looking for a taste, Bettina tells us that the fire has been stopped at the first line of trenches but that reinforcements are desperately needed to prevent a breakthrough.

CARL: Here’s hoping those reserves can be located before the fire attempts a flanking maneuver. Now, it was my understanding that Pasadena had recently cut its firefighting budget in order to increase its police budget, in order to provide badly needed assault vehicles and high-capacity magazines for automatic weapons.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. Bettina tells me that the police have been summoned into the fight against Fire Storm Sigma and that they are currently shooting at it from multiple angles while using water hoses to disperse suspected looters.

CARL: Fighting fire with fire. Only time will tell if the strategy is successful.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. But onto Winter Storm Omega: current predictions are for half an inch of sleet followed by 4-8 inches of snowfall across the American South, leading to martial law, a collapse of civil society, and the regression of those in the affected area to feral or “wolflike” states of behavior.

CARL: Authorities are scrambling to prepare for the onslaught by spreading sand on roads, repurposing heavy construction equipment as ersatz plows, and closing all non-essential facilities, non-essential in this case being defined as places where state legislators or their close family and friends work.

TOM: That’s right, Carl. It has long been a known fact that the American South can’t deal with cold and snow anymore than the American North can deal with heat. The infrastructure just isn’t there.

CARL: Though considering the onslaught of Winter Storm Iota this time last year, one could be forgiven for wondering why road salt and plow trucks hadn’t been purchased anyplace, especially in light of Winter Storm Qoppa two years ago this week.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, one would think that the third year in a row would form a pattern, but apparently not. Perhaps it’s simpler and cheaper to simply throw every man, woman, and child in the state under the bus for climate change?

CARL: Easy, Tom, you know we can’t say the CC-words on this network. They’re going to have to bleep that.

TOM: That’s right, Carl, forgive me. What I meant was perhaps it’s simpler and cheaper to simply throw every man, woman, and child in the state under the bus for completely unprecedented rogue weather patterns that can be neither predicted nor combated.

CARL: That’s more like it, Tom. And now a word from our sponsors, FossilCo Fuels, before we go into your FossilCo Presents Local Weather on the 7s, here on The Barometric Channel.