Perhaps the only profession with a worse batting average than economics is weather forecasting. News station managers have long known weather forecasting to be a losing proposition and have “robbed Peter to pay Paul” by getting rid of real talent and staffing weather rooms with the most attractive people. Clearly, weather forecasting is not only not an exact science; it isn’t a science at all.
The Great Ericius
Weather forecasters have been so incompetent at predicting weather they have desperately turned to the lowly medieval beast known as the “ericius,” Latin for hedgehog, to help determine whether or not the spring season will come early or late. In fact, the only talent today’s weather forecasters can boast about is the ability to interpret the body language of the hedgehog. Unfortunately, this takes decades.
Groundhog Day – Weather Forecasting (Image Courtesy www.wikipedia.org)
The False Hope of Technology
New technology including satellites and weather aircraft have recently given a whole new generation of would-be weather forecasters, attractive or not, hope that brains, intelligence, and talent would win the day.
For perhaps a decade, 1995-2005, things seemed to be looking up in the weather forecasting business given the new array of fancy projection screens, weather patterns beamed from satellites, and more. Unfortunately, this was just a temporary blip in the war of weather forecaster vs. economist.
The realities of climate change and global warming have thrown weather forecasters a curveball of increasingly unpredictable weather. Predicting the weather is now far more complicated than predicting the stock market, and we all know how impossible that is.
Weather Models Once Again Worse Than Economic Models
Today, economists are once gaining the upper hand over weather forecasters. A case in point is a recent prediction in which the North American Mesoscale Forecast System (NAM) predicted 0 inches of snow in one broadcast and 10 inches of snow the next. Apparently the broadcast was based on a Cray Supercomputer recently upgraded with a $36 million investment.
Sticking With Hedgehogs, Opossums, Sheep, Snakes & Birds
Modernists want to make things as complicated as can be. Throwing money and computers at every problem give everyone a big headache. Why not go back to hedgehogs, opossums, sheep, snakes and birds? Or why not rely on an old farmer who spends his time in the fields and can easily predict whether based on what he sees. For more on this, see the infographic below: “How to Forecast Whether Without Gadgets” or read the following books: “Guide to Weather Forecasting: All the Information You’ll Need to Make Your Own Weather Forecast
