Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Those stupid idiots

Anyone who knows me well knows one of my biggest pet peeves is weather forecasters. They have only one real job, and they screw up that one job all the time. And no, that one job is not telling us what the weather is; any moron can step outside and tell whether it's raining or snowing or cloudy or sunny. The only job they really have is to tell us what the weather "will" be.

I'd seen since last week that we were supposed to get snow yesterday. I had to go into town to get some lumber to work on our upstairs, and I wanted to know when the snow was coming so I could plan my day. So I was up early in hopes of catching the first weather forecast of the day. The little ticker in the corner of the television screen said it was 5:30am and that it was 42 degrees. The verbiage varied on all three local stations but the numbers were the same. Here is the exact forecast as it was shared on all three local stations:

"We hit our high for the day at midnight at 40 degrees, as the temperature will be dropping all day. At noon we will be down to 30 degrees, and you'll see temps in the low 20's on your commute home at 5:00. The rain will give way to flurries by mid-morning, and we could see a half inch by 7:00 pm."

Now even though the temp on the screen said it was two degrees higher than what they said the actual high would be, I can live with a two degree difference. I went back to bed with plans of heading to the lumberyard mid-morning after the rain had quit. I was back up in a couple hours and working on my project. Around 9:30 I looked outside and saw that the rain hadn't stopped. I flipped on the telley, and the temp in the corner of the screen said 51 degrees! What?!?! They had said it was going to stop raining and that it would be colder! Well, I had already arranged getting a truck so I had to make the drive in the rain. I was home by noon and decided to check out what the mentally-challenged rejects were saying now. Guess what? The forecast was still the same as it had been at 5:30 that morning! The stupid idiots could see it wasn't snowing and that the temperature was rising, not falling, and yet they still just read off their prompters like nothing was wrong.

I know trying to predict what mood 'Ol Mother will be in, and what she'll do because of that mood can be hard sometimes. But come on!!! Don't go bragging about your Doppler 9000 when you don't have a clue how to use it. And maybe, just maybe, when you can see the red stuff in the thermometer going the wrong way, throw away the cue cards and admit you're wrong. Yeah right; like that'll happen. They'll just keep making the same stupid forecasts and we'll just keep watching them like the sheep we are.

One final thought... the people that write the Farmer's Almanac make weather forecasts for a year in advance, and they are statistically right more often than they're wrong. Makes ya think doesn't it?

5 Comments:

Blogger Laura said...

I KNEW you were going to write about this subject next, since I got to hear your tirade live and on your tall soapbox yesterday! But I do totally agree with you. I may as well not even watch the weather(actually I don't, I hear it all from you) because it drives me karazy too.

12:00 PM  
Blogger Andrew said...

You blame it on the weathermen, I blame it on Ohio...The Butthole of America.

12:30 PM  
Blogger 3rd string's finest said...

If you think Ohio's weathermen are ridiculous you should listen to the weather channel in Bahrain. You would have a field day! Later, Bro.

2:00 PM  
Blogger Kimmy said...

I thought of you this morning Sam, as I joyfully scraped and brushed the snow off of my car so I could head to work to put in an 8 hour day.
I don't know what the weather holds for tomorrow, but I'll be sure to think of you again as I head out for another 8 hours:-)

I agree on the weather forecasts. They frustrate me too.

9:41 PM  
Blogger lyndsay said...

yea, yea we all hate the weatherman, but i bet in every other state (besides ohio) their excactly right with their predictions i mean it's a heavy load trying to predict the weather of an idiotic STATE. What can you expect?...i guess...ha that last line should be ohio's slogan haah.

8:10 AM  

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