‘Weather’ or not to believe

April 22, 2009 09:05 am

— I once heard someone say it’s funny that television weather forecasters can be wrong 50 percent of the time and not get fired.
If you’ve ever seen a meteorologist at work while there is severe weather, you know they are important and do a good job. When it comes to being a clairvoyant, that’s a different story. Do you remember March 2008 when that massive snowstorm moved through the Texoma area? Of course you do.
Forecasters predicted six to nine inches of snow for Ada and we got half an inch. What a ripoff! For those of us who love snow anyway.
The Red River area received many inches of snow. The system that moved through went about one-hundred miles south of where they were predicting it would go.
That’s fine. I know weather forecasters don’t control the weather but couldn’t they get on the air and say, “Wow. We really dropped the ball on that one. Sorry.”
Several months later, I saw a commercial on a local station saying, “We were there when the snowstorm pounded the Sherman-Denison area.”
Oh yeah? What about the Ada area. You got us all excited about snow and then no apology when we didn’t get squat.
I would rather a weather forecaster just say, “We think this is where this system is headed but we could be off by 100 miles or so, so don’t get too excited.”
In another instance, my son and I were going camping at Robbers Cave State Park near Wilburton in Latimer County. I watched the weather for three days. Not one mention of rain.
The forecast for the Texoma area called for clear skies and no rain. Not even the 20 percent to cover their backsides.
While we were camping, some clouds rolled in so I turned on the radio. The National Weather Service issued severe thunderstorm warnings for Johnston, Coal and Atoka counties. WHAT THE HEY?
Since systems like that usually move at an east-northeast direction, we packed up and left. As we neared McAlester tornado warnings were issued for Pushmataha and Latimer Counties.
We got out of there just in time. Again, how could someone be so far off? The latest “forecast” which predicted clear weather was 12 hours before.
I watched the same news station the next day and no apology. No “Man, we were way off!” or anything. My griping will accomplish nothing and since I can’t predict the weather, I’ll just keep watching the current group. I just wish they would admit sometimes they really don’t know.