Three people have told me this week that they pretty much never look at the weather.
Reason stated by all: It’s never right.
Yes, it is. (Not that I managed to convince any of them.) It’s often pretty darn close. I look at the weather every day — the daily forecast, the weekly trend, the long-range outlook — I absorb them all and plan my week accordingly.
I think this aversion to paying attention to the forecast is very common. For example, last week we had a brief warm spell. (Which I was aware of and planned for accordingly.) Yet there were people at my workplace in boots and wooly socks. I even saw a Canada Goose down coat — those baby’s are very, very warm, I know I have one…that I wear when it is cold. That guy must have been kicking himself when it was shirtsleeves temperature by 11 am.
To my mind, one of the greatest things about modern technology is having access to the weather at any moment. Complete and detailed information is right there in my pocket; I am always ready for anything. I can’t imagine a better use for my iPhone. In fact, I have two weather apps on my device…just because I enjoy cross-referencing…who doesn’t?
I told my friend K. it would rain until Thursday of this week. I believe what the invisible meteorologists inside my pocket tell me. Most people — including many of you — I imagine prefer to look on the bright side and hope for the best.
Not me. My raincoat is out….because from what I understand (and believe with all of my heart) it will be raincoat as opposed to umbrella weather.
It is an objective truth that forecasts have gotten better. I did a story about supercomputing recently and I learned that 20 years ago, even if they had the right data and the ability to run the models on computers, the computers took longer to run the forecast than real time (i.e., it would take 3 days to forecast tomorrow’s weather accurately). Now that supercomputers are super powerful AND sources of data are more reliable, forecasts are pretty much always right.
Vindication!