Danger: Watch Out For Red Flags!

Finally overwhelmed by its abundance of flash-based and pop-up ads, I gave the "heave-ho" to weather.com a while back. Instead, I turned to weather.gov (the site of the National Weather Service), and in turn, the nearest outpost for true local weather. Here, one gets the real weather skinny without the editorial of "garden" vs. "travel" weather forecasts.

However, the government, true to form, does not fail to confuse. Hurricane warning, Tropical Storm warning, Tornado warning, Freeze warning — these I get. They warn you of impending weather-based danger from the word(s) preceeding "warning."

But today, we are under a "Red Flag warning." So if you see any red flags dropping from the sky — run, run for your life!<sup>*

*</sup> Apparently, "red flag" is when the air is cold and the humidity drops low enough — below 35% here?!? — to make wildfires a risk. It is connected somehow to "Fire Weather watch." I still think it's a tenuous connection at best.