Ah, to be a meteorologist. How does one get such a sweet gig as that? The hours are flexible, you get to play with some sweet technological equipment, no one dies* when you screw up, and the job has ZERO accountability.
I mean seriously. Look at this example from Weather.com’s forecast for this afternoon. I’m trying to plan whether or not to attend the Seattle Beerfest, and some solid weather information would be helpful. This is not solid weather information:
Thunderstorms are predicted. This is very unusual for the Seattle area. But on the flip side, there is only a 40% chance of any precipitation. In what kind of BizarroWorld does this sort of thing make sense? It doesn’t make sense at all, and it doesn’t need to. We’ve all simply grown accustomed to this sort of insanity and ambiguity. Could you imagine getting a similar prediction from your doctor? “Ma’am, your husband is going to die before dinnertime. However, there is a 40% chance that he will recover fully.” Insanity, I say.
I tip my hat to those who were smart enough to go to school and learn how to generate graphical (mis-)representations of the weather like the one above. Seriously. The bitterness I harbor about the cushiness of your work is completely offset by the comfort I get from knowing you did not end up as a doctor, an air-traffic controller, or in any other occupation that can have life or death consequences. We are all safer thanks to your life choices.
*OK, so there was this time when I was a kid where my dad and I donned hip waders and trekked out to an island in a reservoir near Duluth, MN, to go camping based on Richard “Heatwave”** Berler’s report that we would have a dry weekend ahead. Of course it rained like a sumbitch, wind nearly blew our tent away with us in it, and lightning split one of the trees at our campsite. Adding insult to injury, the lake rose several inches because of the storm. The boots that kept us dry going in were water-filled weights going out. But technically, we did not die.
**“Heatwave” might possibly be the best nickname for a meteorologist EVER. Mr. Berler is still paying the bills with his forecasting skills, too. Let that be a warning to all you would-be campers in the Laredo, TX, area.
LOL! You forgot the best part of being a weatherman in Seattle…getting to name the doppler system after yourself.
Of course…how could I forget the “Wappler Doppler”? (And for those of your outside of this region, yes, those words *do* rhyme.)
Ok, we all know how I have to put my $.02 in… I have a friend who is a meteorologist, and it IS her job to save lives. Her job is to issue the flood warnings, tornado warnings, etc in the state of TX. Obviously, she isn’t the only one whose job this is, but she IS supposed to help prevent the loss of life…
While life took me away from the computer, Neo, and pretty much everything internet-related for far too long, life is slowly bringing me back to cyberspace. Subsequently, I find myself back at your blog after a long, long absence..and I find myself laughing out loud again.
If I recall Heatwave got his nickname in Duluth because of a blown forcast. He was so deliriously out of place in Minnesota/Wisconsin but it seems everyone saw him as their own and loved him for it. And we all knew he’d get it wrong - so you just did the opposite of what he said. He was so camera shy that he would hold a clipboard over his face while he made his “predictions”. I’m sure he’s shaved his long beard by now.