OK...if you want to save yourself 5 minutes and 23 seconds, just skip reading this post! It's purely drivel...apparently I'm unable to come up with anything of real interest to type today! But since I've gone to the trouble of writing it and I like the picture I'll go ahead and publish it. Hopefully you don't fall asleep before you get to the picture!
Ohhhh! The weather outside is...surprising!
I know I've lamented to people many times about the forecasting here. If you haven't heard my theory, here it is. The weatherfolks here in Alaska use a dartboard when creating the forecast. Each section of the dartboard has some vague weatherese. So on the "summer" dartboard there are things like "showers in the AM, intermittent rain in the PM, possible clearing late" and "partly cloudy in the morning, with a chance of rain or showers". The winter dartboard is filled with phrases like "snow showers in the morning, chance of snow or clearing in the afternoon" and "windy at times, intermittent snow showers after 11AM". The seasonally appropriate dartboard is then hung at one end of someone's hallway. First thing in the morning (or maybe right before bed??) s/he stumbles down the hallway, throwing a dart. The dart is the retrieved on her/his way to the computer where s/he types the totally meaningless drivel into a weather forecast and publishes it.
The dartboard phrases are vague enough to be considered "accurate" about 50% of the time. The other 50% we get surprised. Maybe it's a March blizzard, or maybe it's a random sunny day like yesterday! On Monday the forecast for our area included the words 'rain' and/or 'showers' for every one of the next 7 days. Then we woke up to partly cloudy on Tuesday! Go figure!
Regardless of how we get it, we try to take advantage of any halfway decent weather. It's becoming more difficult with the absurdity of the bug population, but we try! So do the bees...here's one at work at the school playground yesterday afternoon!
Ohhhh! The weather outside is...surprising!
I know I've lamented to people many times about the forecasting here. If you haven't heard my theory, here it is. The weatherfolks here in Alaska use a dartboard when creating the forecast. Each section of the dartboard has some vague weatherese. So on the "summer" dartboard there are things like "showers in the AM, intermittent rain in the PM, possible clearing late" and "partly cloudy in the morning, with a chance of rain or showers". The winter dartboard is filled with phrases like "snow showers in the morning, chance of snow or clearing in the afternoon" and "windy at times, intermittent snow showers after 11AM". The seasonally appropriate dartboard is then hung at one end of someone's hallway. First thing in the morning (or maybe right before bed??) s/he stumbles down the hallway, throwing a dart. The dart is the retrieved on her/his way to the computer where s/he types the totally meaningless drivel into a weather forecast and publishes it.
The dartboard phrases are vague enough to be considered "accurate" about 50% of the time. The other 50% we get surprised. Maybe it's a March blizzard, or maybe it's a random sunny day like yesterday! On Monday the forecast for our area included the words 'rain' and/or 'showers' for every one of the next 7 days. Then we woke up to partly cloudy on Tuesday! Go figure!
Regardless of how we get it, we try to take advantage of any halfway decent weather. It's becoming more difficult with the absurdity of the bug population, but we try! So do the bees...here's one at work at the school playground yesterday afternoon!
You forgot the part where they sometimes just lump everything together as "Saturday night thru Wednesday" and just use climatology for the forecast. That pretty much means they can't even hit the dartboard! :-)
ReplyDeleteCarl
Judging from my extensive experience of Whittier weather (one week!), I think if they just go with "Cloudy with a chance of showers" EVERY DAY, they'd have better than a 50/50 chance of being right!
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