Weathering the times

You can't win. And when I say "you," I mean anyone who is affected by not only the weather, but also the weather forecasts.

Case in point: starting late Saturday, the weather people were saying that yesterday (Monday) was going to be a dicey day, with chances for heavy rain and wind, even possible tornadic activity (formerly known as "tornadoes").

The school systems reacted by planning to close early yesterday, two hours, sometimes three hours. The rationale is that if the storms hit in mid-afternoon, just as the kids are being dismissed, you'd have chaos on the parking lots and roads. Better to let them out early, right?

Well, the late afternoon news was full of parents who had a LOT to say about this.

 "The kids need to be in school all day! It's safer there, and I have work to do, and I can't interrupt my day to get the kids!"

 "They should have closed the schools! How did they know when the storm would come?"

 "It was right to close early, but they closed too early!"

And then, there was this: as of late evening, the only area that really seemed to get hit hard was out in Carroll County, toward Westminster. Farmers there had wind damage to outbuildings, and one guy had his small herd of Texas longhorns running around free after the fence blew down. So naturally, people drop their worrying and pick up their keyboard and start knocking the meteorologists.

 "They don't know nothing! They just guess!"

 "They make a couple hundred thousand dollars to get people all worked up for no reason!"

  And my perennial favorite: "I could do their job and do it a whole lot better than them!"

There was a time when there was absolutely no scientific weather forecasting, unless you counted Uncle Amos's rheumatism acting up when it was "fixin' to rain." Today we have people doing their best to warn us and help prepare for the worst, while we hope for the best. 

There's no way to foretell the weather with 100% accuracy. Even Uncle Amos got it wrong sometimes. 

Just be glad you're not chasing longhorn cattle all over Carroll County, and take it easy!