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Weather Slatterns

Published Aug. 12, 2015

NEWS:   A suggestive AccuWeather graphic (featuring what appeared to be a phallic stormfront) caused giggles on social media.

Two inches of rain in New Jersey rarely makes news, but an AccuWeather map that piqued social media's most juvenile sensibilities created a humorous viral sensation (though the phallic chart was not a novel phenomenon).

On 11 August 2015, NJ.com published an article titled "Up to 2 Inches of Rain an Hour Possible in parts of N.J.," a mundane headline that belied what turned out to be an entertaining map (seen above) and led to a slew of ribald remarks in the comments section as well as a follow-up article titled "Weather Map Gets a Rise Out of Commenters" (which cataloged some of the site's favorite comments):

Early this morning NJ.com posted a story about today's miserable weather. The post included a map, provided by AccuWeather, which showed a giant green band of rain blanketing the Eastern Seaboard.

But whereas some see stormy skies in the map, others — a great many others, according to our Facebook page — have their minds in the (rain) gutter. This decidedly phallic map ended up inspiring some of the most creative comments we've received all year.

BuzzFeed tweeted the map out to its followers along with several innuendo-laced comments:

Anchors on Chicago station WGN giggled uncontrollably during an on-air display of the map in a segment about its online popularity:

While NJ.com acknowledged the attention-grabbing phallic map in a separate article, AccuWeather has not commented via Facebook or Twitter on the viral phenomenon they inadvertently created.

Kim LaCapria is a former writer for Snopes.

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