Something I Was Wondering Recently
All y'all are awesome. Thanks to you I have plenty of essay topics collected for future blog fodder. I thank you. Sincerely.
But meanwhile, here's something I don't get...("Calculus?" he asked). That too...but really what I don't get is this:
Weather men and women (who prefer to be called 'meteorologists*' but I simply refuse to play) pretty much guess at the weather. Sure, they've got their Dopplar radar and cloud cams and whatever else they use but even after basing their predictions on all their techy toys, they know, as well as we do, that their "50% chance of rain" (besides being the biggest hedge ever. Hello? Even odds? Cue the two old farmer dudes rocking on the front porch: 'Yep, could rain today'....'Uh, yep, or not')is nothing more than an educated guess. Winds change direction, air warms or cools, somewhere a butterfly flaps its wing and the whole weather story changes.
So how is it that when they issue a severe storm warning for high winds from 12-4 am damned if the wind doesn't start blowing right at midnight? Every time?
*I used to think (up until 5 minutes ago)that weather people were silly to have a fancy pants name that had nothing to do with weather and everything to do with meteors. Always seemed kinda ingenuous to me. But then I looked up the Latin root: meμετέωρος, metéōros, which means "high in the sky" and I think that is just adorable so maybe I'm over that little bit of it.
But meanwhile, here's something I don't get...("Calculus?" he asked). That too...but really what I don't get is this:
Weather men and women (who prefer to be called 'meteorologists*' but I simply refuse to play) pretty much guess at the weather. Sure, they've got their Dopplar radar and cloud cams and whatever else they use but even after basing their predictions on all their techy toys, they know, as well as we do, that their "50% chance of rain" (besides being the biggest hedge ever. Hello? Even odds? Cue the two old farmer dudes rocking on the front porch: 'Yep, could rain today'....'Uh, yep, or not')is nothing more than an educated guess. Winds change direction, air warms or cools, somewhere a butterfly flaps its wing and the whole weather story changes.
So how is it that when they issue a severe storm warning for high winds from 12-4 am damned if the wind doesn't start blowing right at midnight? Every time?
*I used to think (up until 5 minutes ago)that weather people were silly to have a fancy pants name that had nothing to do with weather and everything to do with meteors. Always seemed kinda ingenuous to me. But then I looked up the Latin root: meμετέωρος, metéōros, which means "high in the sky" and I think that is just adorable so maybe I'm over that little bit of it.
Labels: weather
cobbled together by Moi at 6:28 AM
7 Comments:
Really bad storms have more sense of purpose than little rain clouds.
Our weather guy is named Dallas Raines. He has a fake orange tan..and has been around forever.
When I was in high school, I told my dad (a high school counselor) that I wanted to take a course that was being offered in cosmetology. I thought it had something to do with the cosmos/astronomy.
He was a little perplexed.
OK, I came late to the suggestion party.....please consider my submissions. As for weather people...my father-in-law called them the weather bookies....exactly. We get the LA channels and there is one woman who does traffic and weather (kinda like oil and water) and she dresses like a hooker....then there is Laura Diaz of the wet lips, one eye covered with her hair so she couldn't see a Doppler if she had to. She is an anchor.
It seems obvious to me that they aren't predicting the weather,..they're controlling it!
Ever notice how everytime the space shuttle goes up,there's a storm someplace on earth?
..I rest my case.
I looooooove weather, so I really enjoyed reading this post. :)
I think I missed my second calling of weatherwoman (is that kinda like Wonder Woman?? :) ).
I'm behind on my reading. Ahem.
One of my college sciences was meteorology. Which I quit when we started with the equations tracking moisture concentrations at different levels of the atmosphere.
Here's the thing: the "predictions" are based on observations of similar conditions, and those only go back to about 1850 if you're lucky. And being a West Coaster, you are definitely not lucky. People have been making note of the weather in your neck of the woods for too short a span to build up a reliable gauge of what is gonna happen when them cloud-thangs look like 'at.
So don't be mad at the weather-casters. Pity the fools who rely on others for whether they need their slicker today.
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