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Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Opus 2018-214: Is Weather Fake News?

My wife is glued to the Weather Channel on the cable TV in our room at the hotel.  These people are living through the high point of their career.  All of the drama coaching they had over the years is paying off.  We are all going to die but we are going to be entertained while we do it.  The graphics are superb.  The flowing colors and morphing images are awesome.  Shakespeare would drool over some of the dramatic presentations of the dynamics of hurricanes.  Oscars will go to the meteorologists standing on sidewalks where the ocean will surge.

Meanwhile at Weather.com it tells me the forecasted wind speed for Charleston, South Carolina is 34 MPH for Friday and  54 MPH for Saturday.  That is some real wind but a long way from Armageddon.  Where we are my wife is worried about them shutting down the airport and keeping my son from flying out and the forecast is for 10 MPH. 

I understand that weather is an guessing game.  I am amazed at what they can figure out but even then it could have been totally different.  What I don’t understand is how they can come to such extreme differences from the same data.  We will be starting the drive home soon.  My wife expects to be swept from the Interstate by flash floods.  I expect to see a few puddles.  I imagine the truth will be somewhere in between.

homo unius libri

2 comments:

Comments are welcome. Feel free to agree or disagree but keep it clean, courteous and short. I heard some shorthand on a podcast: TLDR, Too long, didn't read.