​A few weeks ago, as Hurricane Florence slouched towards the Mid-Atlantic coast, the Weather Channel aired a startling segment that used powerful graphics to place one of their reporters within, and eventually under, increasing levels of storm surge.

Like all things compelling, it is both terrifying and informative, if maybe a little overly dramatic. Still, there's no better way to illustrate the scale of 6-foot-high storm surge than to use computers to submerge reporter Erika Navarro.

Apparently, this isn't the first time the Weather Channel, which arguably stands to benefit from making the forces of nature terrifying and inescapable (they are!), has used this technique to grant a new perspective on the weather.

Today, Alyssa Bereznak, a staff writer for The Ringer, surfaced some footage on Twitter of the network covering the California wildfires last year.

Today, California's Napa Valley is still recovering from a string of wildfires that devastated homes, displaced families, destroyed vineyards and devastated tens of thousands of acres in Sonoma and Napa counties. And this year's wildfire season has claimed nearly a dozen lives.

The Weather Channel might have figured out how to use graphics and audio to evoke a visceral reaction in an increasingly disinterested audience, but the reality, as always, is much more dire.

[Via Alyssa Bereznak]