Crying wolf snow

Went to bed last night shortly after watching the local news. The weather forecaster displayed a colorful, easy-to-read map indicating expected snowfall accumulations. My town appeared to be in the dark blue band, representing 2 to 3 inches of snow! Now, where you live, that might not be a lot. But here in the deep South, it’s a rare and delightful treat. I was excited. OK. Not really. I woke up this morning and hurried over to the window like a child on Christmas morning running to look under the tree. What did I see? A bag of switches, pretty much. “Hmm,” I thought to myself. “This snow bears an uncanny resemblance to rain.”

That’s pretty much par for the course for our local weather forecasters. To them, accurately predicting snow seems to be about as difficult as picking the winning Powerball numbers. As a conservative estimate, I’d say they’ve called for snow at least seven or eight times this winter. That’s roughly equivalent to the total number of snow flurries I have seen all year. Seven or eight. So honestly, I didn’t get excited when I saw the forecast. It’s pretty much just a big joke around here now.

Maybe I could be a local weather forecaster. There seems to be no job accountability. And I love their excuses. “Sometimes snow can be hard to predict.” Really now? That’s like a baseball player batting .200 saying, “A baseball is hard to hit.” What a nice little built-in excuse. The weather is hard to predict. So basically, their whole job is based on predicting something that they’ve already admitted cannot be predicted. And I’ll bet the only people who disagree are the weather forecasters. And their mothers. And even some of them are starting to get suspicious.

As Seinfeld says: “What’s with the five-day forecast? That’s something else they try to pull over on us. There is no five-day forecast. If the five-day forecast was accurate, we’d only have to watch the weather every five days.”

Oh yeah, the Super Bowl was last night. Here are my thoughts:

– I never remember this much talk the day after the Super Bowl concerning the officiating (here and here). There were for sure a couple of big penalties at curious times.

– The commercials were the least-interesting that I can remember for a Super Bowl. The car commercials, especially. I think I’d not buy one of those just because the ads were so bad. I did like the one commercial where they were playing backyard football and the guy planted his girlfriend. That was hilarious.

– All Super Bowl halftimes are pretty much boring to me. This one wasn’t much different. I am, however, amazed that Mick Jagger can still run and jump around like that. They’ve got to be well into their sixties.

– And most importantly, why are they still counting Super Bowls in Roman numerals? I’m sure when it was I, II, and III, it was kinda cool. But I mean, really. In four years, we’ll be watching Super Bowl XLIV? I think it’s time to let it go.

And, that’s about it. 24 is on tonight! That makes me happy. And GH is on SoapNet after that. Port Charles is about to be overcome by an encephalitis epidemic! It’s really stressing me out. If anything happens to Luke, I’ll boycott TV forever. (OK, probably not really.)

“Her hat is hanging by the door. The one she bought in Mexico. It blocked the wind, it stopped the rain. She’d never leave that one…”

Crying wolf snow

Went to bed last night shortly after watching the local news. The weather forecaster displayed a colorful, easy-to-read map indicating expected snowfall accumulations. My town appeared to be in the dark blue band, representing 2 to 3 inches of snow! Now, where you live, that might not be a lot. But here in the deep South, it’s a rare and delightful treat. I was excited. OK. Not really. I woke up this morning and hurried over to the window like a child on Christmas morning running to look under the tree. What did I see? A bag of switches, pretty much. “Hmm,” I thought to myself. “This snow bears an uncanny resemblance to rain.”

That’s pretty much par for the course for our local weather forecasters. To them, accurately predicting snow seems to be about as difficult as picking the winning Powerball numbers. As a conservative estimate, I’d say they’ve called for snow at least seven or eight times this winter. That’s roughly equivalent to the total number of snow flurries I have seen all year. Seven or eight. So honestly, I didn’t get excited when I saw the forecast. It’s pretty much just a big joke around here now.

Maybe I could be a local weather forecaster. There seems to be no job accountability. And I love their excuses. “Sometimes snow can be hard to predict.” Really now? That’s like a baseball player batting .200 saying, “A baseball is hard to hit.” What a nice little built-in excuse. The weather is hard to predict. So basically, their whole job is based on predicting something that they’ve already admitted cannot be predicted. And I’ll bet the only people who disagree are the weather forecasters. And their mothers. And even some of them are starting to get suspicious.

As Seinfeld says: “What’s with the five-day forecast? That’s something else they try to pull over on us. There is no five-day forecast. If the five-day forecast was accurate, we’d only have to watch the weather every five days.”

Oh yeah, the Super Bowl was last night. Here are my thoughts:

– I never remember this much talk the day after the Super Bowl concerning the officiating (here and here). There were for sure a couple of big penalties at curious times.

– The commercials were the least-interesting that I can remember for a Super Bowl. The car commercials, especially. I think I’d not buy one of those just because the ads were so bad. I did like the one commercial where they were playing backyard football and the guy planted his girlfriend. That was hilarious.

– All Super Bowl halftimes are pretty much boring to me. This one wasn’t much different. I am, however, amazed that Mick Jagger can still run and jump around like that. They’ve got to be well into their sixties.

– And most importantly, why are they still counting Super Bowls in Roman numerals? I’m sure when it was I, II, and III, it was kinda cool. But I mean, really. In four years, we’ll be watching Super Bowl XLIV? I think it’s time to let it go.

And, that’s about it. 24 is on tonight! That makes me happy. And GH is on SoapNet after that. Port Charles is about to be overcome by an encephalitis epidemic! It’s really stressing me out. If anything happens to Luke, I’ll boycott TV forever. (OK, probably not really.)

“Her hat is hanging by the door. The one she bought in Mexico. It blocked the wind, it stopped the rain. She’d never leave that one…”