The Weather Is Here, Wish You Were Accurate

About 11 AM, two days ago, local television stations began breaking into their "regularly scheduled programming" to bring us bulletins about an approaching emergency.  These winter storm warnings for what they later began terming "Winter Storm 2014," told of weather conditions expected nearly two days from that point, in the evening of the following day.  The storm was to take us into isolation for hours as snow and freezing rain enveloped us.  Specific amounts of ice and snow accumulation were provided as well.

My level of faith in the accuracy of their precipitation has reached new lows of late, since the best of the best usually hits about 75% of the time (Source: ForecastAdvisor.com), but those measures are simply the high for the day, and whether it rained on a day when they forecast precipitation.  When it comes to stating when or if the temp will reach 32 degrees, their accuracy is quite limited.  Doing it forty hours out?  Their likelihood of being correct is probably quite small.

Charging out and raising the alarm is risky.  Schools, more so than businesses, often make decisions about closing for the day based on weather forecasts, but they wait until the night before.  Nevertheless, we have been receiving warnings and dire forecasts ever since.  When the storm was to begin, we had steady rain, but temperatures did not drop enough to produce snow, or to freeze the rain that fell.  This morning, we have a slight drizzle and on the windshield of the car, there are small fragments of ice, as if if had sleeted briefly, and the streets are wet.  No snow, and no ice accumulation.  Why am I not surprised?

The only people who are happy about this are school children, teachers and weather people on TV.   The weather people are delighted, they have enjoyed hours of face time on their regular news broadcasts, as well as all those emergency break-ins.  You should know that almost no one in the business of TV weather actually looks back at their forecasts to see how accurate they are, not even for bragging rights or to look good on their resume.  What they fondly remember is leading off the news and having all that time on camera.  It calls to my mind a line from one of my favorite singers, Jimmy Buffett--"The weather is here, wish you were beautiful."  In this case, I'd put it more like this.  "The weather is here, wish you were accurate."