It Could Happen Tomorrow is a Speculative Documentary series running on The Weather Channel (yes, The Weather Channel actually has some series programs), which looks at the effects of potential weather or other natural disasters (levee failures in Sacramento, another 1906-level earthquake in San Francisco, a tornado like the ones that struck the Midwest US during Spring 2011 striking Washington, D.C., etc.) The point of each episode is that these are not wild predictions of spectacular and unreasonable happenings, but reasonably predictable events for the area of the country they look at that we can realistically expect will happen and we should prepare for them; it might not happen for twenty years, or it could happen tomorrow.
Tropes used:
- Apocalypse How: Most depicted are a Class 0 (tornadoes, earthquakes, hurricanes and the like that at most put a region at risk), but the program has addressed at least some class 1 (earthquakes/landslides that cause oceanwide tsunamis) two definite Class 1 to borderline Class 2 (the Yellowstone supervolcano erupting, an asteroid strike), and one class 3b to class 6 (gamma ray burst).
- The Beforetimes:
- New Orleans in the lost episode, before the disaster prediction that did come true - Hurricane Katrina.
-
Perhaps all of us right now...
- Cosy Catastrophe:
- In a way, the potential tornado disasters - not for the people in the areas that could possibly be struck by them, but because even the very worst tornadoes have relatively small damage tracks and affected areas. Even if a tornado wiped out, say, much of Dallas, people as close as five to ten miles in all other directions than the tornado's path would be perfectly fine unless affected by flooding or straight-line winds. "Mile wide tornado" sounds and is scary - but it only causes damage for a mile or two wide for the track of the tornado, meaning that at any given point, there's undamaged resources and assistance immediately available.
- As soon as the resources can reach the problem areas. One notorious issue with tornadoes is debris blocking immediate assistance. Easier to rebuild yes, but assistance to those in the collapses takes a bit longer.
- Title Drop: All the time. It's almost as if the announcer is paid by the number of times he can get the title of the series into a scene.
- Tornadoes: One of the more common disasters. The program has covered the possibility of a tornado striking Dallas, Texas; Chicago, Illinois; and Washington, D.C.
