Have you ever gone through a week without hearing someone say something about the weather? What about going through a week without hearing a complaint about a weather forecast? What about the accuracy of weather forecasters?
Let’s eliminate from our reasons for complaints the fact of human limitation. We all make mistakes. The problem with weather forecasters isn’t that they aren’t right more than about a little over 50% of the time—except in regions like hot and cold deserts, Death Valley, say, or the Atacama. The problem is that forecasters give us a per cent, a likelihood of certain weather phenomena, and they give that per cent for periods deep into the future, like 10 days. What can we do with that percentage? A 30% chance of rain makes rain unlikely, but still possible; a 70% makes it likely, but not necessarily so for your location.
Now, there are certain circumstances that make weather more or less uniform over a “relatively” long time, say as much as a couple of weeks. These are the weather “controls,” like a dominating High pressure system, one that has descending, warming air parked over a region. Sinking air warms as it sinks, so evaporation increases just as it does beneath a hand-dryer, making for cloudless days. Then, of course, there are the circumstances of season: One doesn’t expect frost in North Carolina’s lowlands during August. And you can think of other circumstances that influence weather phenomena, such as altitude, ocean currents, the proximity to large lakes and the ocean, semi-permanent wind systems, and the biggest overall control: Latitude. Some of these offset the others, however. Quito, Ecuador, lies on the Equator, but it also sits atop the Andes at almost two miles above sea level. So, there’s the interplay of seasons, latitude, and altitude in Quito’s weather. I won’t even mention—oops! I’m mentioning it—the effects of giant volcanic eruptions, such as those that lowered world temperatures during the Year without a Summer in the early nineteenth century.
Anyway, back to forecasts. I came across an online analysis of BBC weather service forecasts. The author of Slimyhorror.com
( https://weather.slimyhorror.com/ ) analyzed, using his own criteria, the accuracy of those forecasts. Turns out that the BBC is right only a bit over 50% of the time for a one-day forecast. Take it out to a week, and the forecasts are correct only a quarter to a third of the time. Doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it?
The need for forecasts probably has some deep-seated relationship to our need for safety, maybe something in our brains that is also in the brains of squirrels, the something that says, “You better get out there to collect walnuts for burial while the walnuts are falling from the trees.” The well-stocked walnut closet wards off starvation in the cold months.
We’re always in the business of forecasting. In youth and in transitional stages (as during times between jobs or at the outset of retirement) we rely on forecasts for reaching goals. The very act of going to college or trade school is one motivated by a forecast. And marriage or moving-in are also based on forecasts of long-term “social weather,” forecasts that recognize a climate that overrides the daily vicissitudes of weather. Climate, after all, is weather averaged over decades. Within the context of climate there’s a range of variability.
In those long-term “social weather” forecasts, there’s also a range of variability governed by the analogs of natural weather controls like semi-permanent Highs and Lows of feelings, location, and the occasional unexpected and outside influences like eruptions of one kind or another, including the disruptions of setbacks and tragic personal losses.
If you assessed the accuracy of your past forecasts, what would you find? Were you as accurate as the BBC weather forecasters were? Did you hit the mark on 50% of your forecasts? How many of your forecasts were altered by unexpected events or encounters?
Can you make a forecast for your life one day out? One week out? One month? A year? And will that forecast be a mere mental exercise or a plan over which you have control or are the control the way latitude, altitude, and semi-permanent pressure systems are controls on the daily weather? Maybe you’re one of those hot or cold desert dwellers who knows that without some unexpected phenomenon like a volcanic eruption, tomorrow’s weather will be the same as today’s, almost year-round. As for me, I’ve learned to accept the unexpected vicissitudes in the climate of my life that alter my daily forecasts and make me adapt in the moment.
Apparently, being wrong about the future half the time doesn’t discourage us from making more forecasts just like the weather forecasters. We keep going to the weather services for forecasts even though we know by experience (and statistics) that they get things right only half the time or less. And we keep making forecasts for our own lives.
Are we just naïve, plain stupid, or hopeful? Are we driven to know the future to make reaching it easier by reducing anxiety about its coming?
Let’s eliminate from our reasons for complaints the fact of human limitation. We all make mistakes. The problem with weather forecasters isn’t that they aren’t right more than about a little over 50% of the time—except in regions like hot and cold deserts, Death Valley, say, or the Atacama. The problem is that forecasters give us a per cent, a likelihood of certain weather phenomena, and they give that per cent for periods deep into the future, like 10 days. What can we do with that percentage? A 30% chance of rain makes rain unlikely, but still possible; a 70% makes it likely, but not necessarily so for your location.
Now, there are certain circumstances that make weather more or less uniform over a “relatively” long time, say as much as a couple of weeks. These are the weather “controls,” like a dominating High pressure system, one that has descending, warming air parked over a region. Sinking air warms as it sinks, so evaporation increases just as it does beneath a hand-dryer, making for cloudless days. Then, of course, there are the circumstances of season: One doesn’t expect frost in North Carolina’s lowlands during August. And you can think of other circumstances that influence weather phenomena, such as altitude, ocean currents, the proximity to large lakes and the ocean, semi-permanent wind systems, and the biggest overall control: Latitude. Some of these offset the others, however. Quito, Ecuador, lies on the Equator, but it also sits atop the Andes at almost two miles above sea level. So, there’s the interplay of seasons, latitude, and altitude in Quito’s weather. I won’t even mention—oops! I’m mentioning it—the effects of giant volcanic eruptions, such as those that lowered world temperatures during the Year without a Summer in the early nineteenth century.
Anyway, back to forecasts. I came across an online analysis of BBC weather service forecasts. The author of Slimyhorror.com
( https://weather.slimyhorror.com/ ) analyzed, using his own criteria, the accuracy of those forecasts. Turns out that the BBC is right only a bit over 50% of the time for a one-day forecast. Take it out to a week, and the forecasts are correct only a quarter to a third of the time. Doesn’t inspire much confidence, does it?
The need for forecasts probably has some deep-seated relationship to our need for safety, maybe something in our brains that is also in the brains of squirrels, the something that says, “You better get out there to collect walnuts for burial while the walnuts are falling from the trees.” The well-stocked walnut closet wards off starvation in the cold months.
We’re always in the business of forecasting. In youth and in transitional stages (as during times between jobs or at the outset of retirement) we rely on forecasts for reaching goals. The very act of going to college or trade school is one motivated by a forecast. And marriage or moving-in are also based on forecasts of long-term “social weather,” forecasts that recognize a climate that overrides the daily vicissitudes of weather. Climate, after all, is weather averaged over decades. Within the context of climate there’s a range of variability.
In those long-term “social weather” forecasts, there’s also a range of variability governed by the analogs of natural weather controls like semi-permanent Highs and Lows of feelings, location, and the occasional unexpected and outside influences like eruptions of one kind or another, including the disruptions of setbacks and tragic personal losses.
If you assessed the accuracy of your past forecasts, what would you find? Were you as accurate as the BBC weather forecasters were? Did you hit the mark on 50% of your forecasts? How many of your forecasts were altered by unexpected events or encounters?
Can you make a forecast for your life one day out? One week out? One month? A year? And will that forecast be a mere mental exercise or a plan over which you have control or are the control the way latitude, altitude, and semi-permanent pressure systems are controls on the daily weather? Maybe you’re one of those hot or cold desert dwellers who knows that without some unexpected phenomenon like a volcanic eruption, tomorrow’s weather will be the same as today’s, almost year-round. As for me, I’ve learned to accept the unexpected vicissitudes in the climate of my life that alter my daily forecasts and make me adapt in the moment.
Apparently, being wrong about the future half the time doesn’t discourage us from making more forecasts just like the weather forecasters. We keep going to the weather services for forecasts even though we know by experience (and statistics) that they get things right only half the time or less. And we keep making forecasts for our own lives.
Are we just naïve, plain stupid, or hopeful? Are we driven to know the future to make reaching it easier by reducing anxiety about its coming?
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