Thursday, May 17, 2007

Weather Men, Stock Brokers
and Other Cults
(The Emperor Has No Clothes)

Silbs' first law of weather forecasts is to ignore them. Like stockbrokers, climatologist/meteorologists are wonderful at telling you why something happened...after it happens. As far as predicting events goes, they don't do so well. In spite of all their fancy radars and soft ware programs, most of their "forecasts" would be more accurate if they just used common sense. Around here, that means getting a clear view of the north western sky.

I've always believed that they predict the worst case scenario so as not to bring on our wrath should a good day go bad. In doing so, however, they threaten to reduce the paddling days around here to about 10% of what they should be (I know, I've written about this before...but I digress).

The photo above was taken yesterday around noon,on the Milwaukee River, just north of Mequon during the storms that were predicted, pushed back and never happened. I wasn't going to paddle for fear of being caught out in it, then remembered the many times I'd needlessly canceled going sailing over the years based on one of these BS predictions. Oh, by the way, there was nothing...nothing...on radar to our west when I shoved off.

Paddle safe...

DS

5 comments:

Ron said...

I would appear you had the same storms that never happened that we had in our forecast the day before. They didn't get it righ here either.

Silbs said...

I guess there is something to be said for consistency

Captn O Dark 30 and Super Boo said...

It was raining monkeys by us... There always seems to be a storm cloud over my head!!

DaveO said...

As my friend from Cumbria, northwest England says, "There's no such thing as bad weather, only pi** poor gear".

Silbs said...

Wouldn't mind meeting such a guy :)