This is bordering on the absurd...
I am already tired of the snow and the weather prognosticators this winter!
Truly I enjoy winter and the typical "fun" snowfalls - Who doesn't? You get a couple inches, shovel it, and the drab grey landscape is replaced with a brilliant white blanket on the lawns, roofs and trees. You can drive on it with some confidence until the plows clear it out. And you don't have a weather-forecaster induced nervous breakdown awaiting "certain death and destruction!"
However...Is there another profession where you can be so very, very wrong so very, very often? Imagine - you absolutely "blow" that big sales presentation...You either lose the sale or you miss something in your bid making it the biggest "loser" in your company's history. No problem - the next day you come in all cheery and, instead of getting on your knees and begging to keep your job, you smile and cheerfully explain-away your gaffe! In the real world, this just doesn't happen. In the world of weather, this is the norm.
Fast-forward to the entertainment-driven world of meteorologists (with style and fashion consultants in tow), where being wrong in your forecast is just another thing to smile and talk about the next day. Six-figure salaries, consultants who couldn't make it "on the air", millions of dollars in officious-sounding equipment (Storm-Tracking, Doppler-sensing, fall colour, morning rain projecting radars), and more time in a 1/2 hour telecast than the news...we truly are a shallow society.
How many seniors suffer angst worrying they will be without power until Spring? How many house-bound people are concerned they will run out of food before they get dug out in February? How many parents spend hours on the phones working out alternate plans of baby-sitting because "the big one" is around the corner? How many businesses suffer financially because people aren't shopping (they're cowering in their homes peeking skyward every 3-5 minutes), yet the business owner is staffed for a typical day? Or the employees take a "hit" because they have been told to stay home in anticipation of pending doom from the sky?
And yet we will be glued to the 10:00 news waiting to hear "what happened" while eagerly awaiting our favorite weatherperson/meteorologists' next dose of drivel. We will be watching them stand outside in storms to tell us "There's snow coming down as we speak..." I guess they feel we won't believe them if they just tell us..
What's left? Not much...The National Weather Service discontinued their usually reliable phone forecasts...The Farmer's Almanac is correct every 23'rd day...Gout warnings don't work for snow...
It's absurd.
Mothers - Tell your kids to forget medicine and the law. Instruct them to practice forensics and get their degree in meteorology!
