Hot Air

Weathermen are worthless. Something I love to do when people ask what the weather will be like today is to say: "Like yesterday, just a little different." Sure it's nice to know whether or not to expect rain, but it's extremely rare for a temperature swing from one day to the next to be at all relevant.
Weathermen know they possess minimal value, and so they have figured out over time how to make themselves seem more important. Go to the TV listings for The Weather Channel sometime. Here are some of the names of shows to be broadcast in the evening this week: "Storm Stories," "Storm Riders," "When Weather Changed History," and Joe Versus the Volcano.(1) They need to remind us constantly of those rare instances of extreme weather so that we live in enough fear that we feel compelled to ask them when to expect the next Big One. Here's a tip: expect the average.(2) Expect small changes from day to day. It doesn't take a specialized degree to record those, it takes a thermometer and at least one functioning eyeball.
I was thinking about this because it's hot today. It was also a little breezy. Why don't we ever hear reports about what the wind chill is in summer? Or the heat index in winter? It's because those would only serve normalize any extremes, whereas the way they do it of course accentuates extremes. If it's July and the temperature is 82, then that's no big deal, but if the humidity makes it feel like 94, well shit, now you can get people talking. But that's not the whole story, though. Maybe the wind is also blowing, so that if you apply the winter wind chill factors to the heat-indexed temperature, then maybe the true "feels like" reading becomes something like 84. Back to where you started, not being really concerned about the weather.
Try not to forget that weathermen are like people in infomercials: always making a big fuss about something, always try to sell you something that you don't need.



1. Yes, Joe Versus the Volcano. I'm just as amused by that as you are.
2. As someone has increasingly viewed the world in a probabilistic manner, this is yet another area where people are stupid. Did you ever notice how in the 10-day forecasts that weather.com publishes, that the temperatures on the last couple days will always return close to the average? Of course. They don't know much more than you what it will be like more than a week from now, so they just make sure their predictions are essentially copies of the historical average.