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Okay, I’m as excited as the next gal about new technology. I mean, the wonders of IPhone and IPad and all those apps? I mean, how do they work? It’s well beyond me to fathom but I like ’em.
I marvel at the fact that I can record multiple shows at one time, watch another and call them up at will. (Actually I can’t–ours blew a metaphorical fuse today, and I’ve gotta stop at the Best Buy and get another one of these wonders on my way to a meeting later today). But you get the picture–I am just all agog at the things that can be done these days.
Now if they would only get me a transporter going and a replicator, I’d been in heaven, again metaphorically speaking.
Now weather. That I think bears more analysis. I remember, being almost as old as dirt now, when weather “forecasting” was akin to walking outside and taking a look. Oh sure, the “weatherman” or “weather-girl” (there being no such thing as a weather-woman) just went up on a hill and got a better look.
They, in their wisdom or ability to correctly see, would tell us at 6pm on Monday, what it was likely to be like on Tuesday. Now, perhaps they were lazier than going up onto a hill. Most of my life, our weather came in from the west so I guess it made sense to call over to a western town and ask them what the weather was like–it could fairly be presumed that tomorrow that is what we would enjoy.
Course, they were wrong a huge amount of the time, to the point that nobody really depended on them anyway. It was just a good guess, slightly better than stickin’ your nose our yourself.
So far so good.
But then. Technology started seeping into weather divination and well, things have never been the same. First they started calling themselves meteorologists, all high and mighty. They actually went to college and studied this crap, instead of being the slightly dull (can’t broadcast the news but still looks good on camera if a dude, or the girl who was queen of the Homecoming in town and was still perky though again, unable to read the news competently).
So they started to throw their weight around and use a lotta words like barometric pressure and lows and highs, and well, it got worse until today we got the El Nino or La Nina, all of which mysteriously affects the weather in Iowa.
And instead of telling me about what the weather will be like tomorrow, they started telling me about two days later, then three, and then, horror of horrors, a week! And guess what?
They got wronger and wronger, or more wrong and more wrong, if you are a stickler for proper niceties. And this, I claim is causing a lot of unnecessary depression throughout the land.
Yes, people like me, actually make plans based on what they tell me is going to happen. And then they are wrong, and I’ve wasted time and sometimes money just because they are so arrogant in telling me what they know, is just so much smoke and mirror guesswork.
Worse, people spend more money making contingent plans, in case the 20% chance of rain turns up a few notches to 80% by the night before. And then, of course, it doesn’t rain, and you’ve wasted a lot of time and trouble for nothing.
I don’t even understand this 20% crap in the first place. Is it a 20% chance that it will rain everywhere, or only in 20% of the listening area? Come on, it’s about time to come clean here. Now the Contrarian says that they are getting it more wrong more often, and he claims that that is because that the bigger and better technology gives them a “bigger” viewing audience in terms of space, so they gotta predict over larger land masses than before.
Could be.
And what’s even worse? As if anything could be. The damn dinks actually seem that they are having a good time while telling me that my weekend is ruined for planting or what I did plant is gonna freeze (oops another of those bizarro frosts in July!), or any manner of really depressing information that I don’t wanna hear.
And they love it. The fools in Cedar Rapids are rabid about the subject. Joe and Kai and some nerdy 13 year old just can’t wait for more air time, and break into my calm television viewing, to remind me for the hundredth time to “seek cover in a basement, or bathroom or hallway, away from windows (no chit!).” And it’s always “immediately!” too.
And they stay on the air like that for 45 precious ( of mine that is ) minutes, and there I went and lost another episode of Lost to their crap, and it hasn’t rained a drop here! Oh and then they tell me, in some crawl at around ten in the morning the next day. that the episode will be rerun tonight at one in the morning, thank you very much. Well thank god for Tivo! No wait, I have to get a new one!
So, this all ends up making me depressed about next Monday, and it’s only Tuesday before, and probably Monday’s lousy weather won’t even happen, so I’ve wasted a grump on nothing, and don’t that make you feel slightly S T U P I D?
And Joe is grinnin’ and saying “gotcha” under his breath. Yeah, well I think they all just oughta shut the zip zip up and I’ll go back to lookin’ out the window to determine the weather, as God no doubt intended in the first place.
Just sayin’.
Existential Ennui 
//…..mysteriously affects the weather in Iowa.//
Iowa has weather???? I thought that there was nothing there but cows,pigs,corn,a couple of footballs teams and refugees from MinnetoesA
Jimmy, we closed our borders to the MinnaSOTAians many a year ago, we try to keep the peace between the crazy Kansasans and them by being a buffer state. We don’t however let any of em in without plenty of moola as a toll.
When I lived in Denver, I once stopped at a tavern in the way home from work. The skies were clear when I walked in. I nursed a beer for forty minutes and watch the news, during which the weatherman forecast a slight possibility of snow flurries. I walked out into a blizzard so severe that my car became stuck in a drift and I had to walk the last half mile home.
See? I told ya…its just a big laugh for the weather “experts” to make a good living off us, and laugh their butts off as we get caught out in it!
Pet peeve – down here we’re in the middle of a two-three year drought. Serious business. Everyone is fully aware of it. But when the weather bimbos and bimbas smile at the camera, they tell us how wonderful it is that there is no rain in the forecast for this weekend, so we can P-A-R-T-Y. Idiots. There’s no one in south Florida who wouldn’t trade a nice rain for a Saturday at the beach.
Yep Moe, they are an insensitive bunch. Care nothing about us really, just love to stand in front of the camera and consider themselves on a level with Denzel washington or something. Part of the “entertainment” business, tv you know, they think…I figure they are weather dopes because they couldn’t get into cosmetology school.
Don’t have WeatherBug for for your cellular, laptop, or wherever you’re at? It’s good at Local, Regional and National weather levels.
Best is it shows where the Rainclouds are, and what direction the systems are moving.
Available Online too.
I use it to decide when to roll my windows up, or when to take a hike.
As far as Ipods and Ihops, only good for a year until a new idea is marketed, to obsolete previous things, like PC’s did for years.
New technology to obsolete what one has Is the marketing way.
lol Tony. I have one of those good weather thingies, but heck it’s about as reliable as the local broadcast. A pox on all their rain gauges! …hehe.
I so agree! We always print out the “10 day forecast” off of Weather.com and bring it with us to Cape Cod when we go. We then mark off each day what the real weather was versus what they predicted. Happily it is often nicer than they expected.
Recently the weather report on the area by our cabin in the Adirondacks showed that the temperatures went down to 26 degrees overnight (this was the last week in April or first week in May, that really cold week) and we were sure that meant our outdoor instant hot water heater at the cabin had frozen and cracked since we had not drained it when we left. Thankfully when we got up there, we still had our running hot water, and our thermometer, which records the coldest and hottest temperatures since the last time we were there, said it only went down to 32.6. We were lucky. Thank goodness they were wrong, at least for our cabin’s little microclimate!
BTW, like the new look of your blog – have been so long off the blogs I must not have been here since you re-did it! Am trying to catch up!
Maui, I recall reading that at your blog about the fear about frozen pipes, and on FB too i think. I am so glad you suffered no problems.
WordPress has been going theme silly over here, and I see my own so much, I get bored, so i change it about 3 times a year. And the header about 4…lol keeps me outta trouble!
I dream of Hawaii where the temps seem stuck in the mid 80’s and life is a never ending sigh of happiness…(my dream anyway!)
Sherry, I’ve known a number of weather people in my time and nearly every one of them admits all these gizmos don’t really do much. The weather has this nasty habit of undoing human chutzpah in thinking it’s predictable. It seems all this nonsense comes about because local stations invest in the technology and push their people to brag about it. Allegedly it’s supposed to be a “competitive advantage.” But when was looking sillier than before ever an asset?
We were supposed to be hit huge thunderstorms this weekend. Instead we’ve been socked with miserable humidity and a minor heat wave. Go figure.
Thanks for the fun post!
See, I knew I was right, and I figured somebody would come alone and present actual facts to back up my opinion! ROFL…Thanks Tim!