I was thinking about this today when I was interrupted mid-conversation by an emergency weather alert on my phone. The cause? A snow flurry that was expected to last about an hour. It ended up lasting for about half that.

Now, it's New England. These kind of things happen and I am prepared for them by virtue of living here. When I resumed my conversation the topic turned to why they felt the need to send out an emergency alert for something so mundane. The only reason we could come up with was that if they didn't and someone got in an accident they could probably sue. Reading this article really makes me feel like that's the case.