I know I've said this before, but I think weatherpeople are the luckiest people in the world. They make, on average, over $90,000 a year to be wrong 99% of the time.
My birthday was this past Thursday and the present I received from my girlfriend were two tickets to the Muse concert tomorrow night in Columbus. I had checked out the forecast all week and the weatherpeople were calling for a high between 36 and 38 degrees with a chance of flurries on the night of the concert. This was their prediction through yesterday. When I checked this morning, they drastically altered their forecasts to read as follows: Winter storm watch, with 4-8'' of snow from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon, and sleet mixed in for good measure. There's already talk about the concert being canceled or postponed due to the altered forecast.
What do these people get paid for anyway? Within 12-24 hours, they go from, "It'll be an average late winter day, without much to worry about as far as extreme cold temperatures or precipitation is concerned" to "You may not want to go out of the house for the next 24 hours due to extreme weather conditions. Even if you have to shovel, you may want to duct tape a pillow to the back of your pants due to a high probability of you slipping on ice and falling on your backside. You're welcome."
These predictions are wrong on some level 99% of the time. What weatherpeople essentially get paid for is telling us what is happening right now. What I would give to get paid close to $100,000 for going on television and telling people the following - "Well, as everyone could see, it was a sunny day today. It was cool, but without much wind, the temperature was tolerable. It is darker and colder tonight than it was earlier today. Last I checked, the skies were clear, so expect it to feel much colder overnight. It'll be brighter again tomorrow morning. Okay, that's all I've got for now. Back to you, Chuck and Sandra..."
Why not pay a child in candy to do something similar every night? The child could say, "I was able to go out and play today without a coat! It was fun! We played freeze tag! I won! Woo-hoo! Where's my sucker?"
The child could then pull out a series of random numbers from a hat to provide him/her with his/her forecast. My guess is the level of accuracy wouldn't be drastically different from the meteorologists of today. Let's just give them all a crystal ball, a deck of Tarot cards, and call it a day...
My birthday was this past Thursday and the present I received from my girlfriend were two tickets to the Muse concert tomorrow night in Columbus. I had checked out the forecast all week and the weatherpeople were calling for a high between 36 and 38 degrees with a chance of flurries on the night of the concert. This was their prediction through yesterday. When I checked this morning, they drastically altered their forecasts to read as follows: Winter storm watch, with 4-8'' of snow from Tuesday afternoon through Wednesday afternoon, and sleet mixed in for good measure. There's already talk about the concert being canceled or postponed due to the altered forecast.
What do these people get paid for anyway? Within 12-24 hours, they go from, "It'll be an average late winter day, without much to worry about as far as extreme cold temperatures or precipitation is concerned" to "You may not want to go out of the house for the next 24 hours due to extreme weather conditions. Even if you have to shovel, you may want to duct tape a pillow to the back of your pants due to a high probability of you slipping on ice and falling on your backside. You're welcome."
These predictions are wrong on some level 99% of the time. What weatherpeople essentially get paid for is telling us what is happening right now. What I would give to get paid close to $100,000 for going on television and telling people the following - "Well, as everyone could see, it was a sunny day today. It was cool, but without much wind, the temperature was tolerable. It is darker and colder tonight than it was earlier today. Last I checked, the skies were clear, so expect it to feel much colder overnight. It'll be brighter again tomorrow morning. Okay, that's all I've got for now. Back to you, Chuck and Sandra..."
Why not pay a child in candy to do something similar every night? The child could say, "I was able to go out and play today without a coat! It was fun! We played freeze tag! I won! Woo-hoo! Where's my sucker?"
The child could then pull out a series of random numbers from a hat to provide him/her with his/her forecast. My guess is the level of accuracy wouldn't be drastically different from the meteorologists of today. Let's just give them all a crystal ball, a deck of Tarot cards, and call it a day...
Comments
Post a Comment