Monday, February 1, 2021

Who can predict?

 I'm writing this two nights ago!  By which I mean, it's Friday, January 29, and the weekend weather forecast calls for snow beginning sometime on Sunday the 31st, changing to sleet and freezing rain sometime Sunday evening, and then changing back to snow on Monday, the whole mess ending on Tuesday morning.

There are two possible outcomes, and let's see what happens.  

  • It happens a lot that a weather system comes in from the north or the west or the south and pushes the snow further east, which means we get bupkis for snow, maybe a little slush on the road and that's all. This leads to disappointed kids, who wanted a chance finally to use their sleds, annoying the devil out of their parents, who desperately wanted their kids to use their sleds.  And of course, the TV meteorologists come in for abuse, when people who are willing to risk good money on casino gambling, the state lottery, and buying Chevrolets, howl to the wind when the best educated prognostications about the weather go wrong.    

  • - OR -
  • By the time you're reading this, it's snowing like what Admiral Byrd's polar expedition went through, the wind is what is howling, the kids (and lots of parents) are out flying around on their PAMed-up saucer sleds, grocers are already announcing spot shortages of bread, milk, toilet paper, and PAM, and either way, the world still goes on.
They're calling for temperatures of almost 50° by the end of the week. Tomorrow is Groundhog Day, and many of us are sure that what a rodent sees when he pops out of his hog hole will predict the weather for the next six weeks.

What hath science wrought?

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