Weather

I’m not going to complain about it. Controlling, planning, or choosing the weather is waaaay above my pay grade.

But I do like to keep an eye on it. After all, it’s no fun to look out at a sunny day, don short sleeves to celebrate the onset of spring, and then freeze your cookies because the sun was deceptive. It looked great, but it was only 48 Or it’s 78  but the wind was gusting at 26 mph. Somehow you didn’t notice the trees bending at a ninety-degree angle while you were admiring the sunshine.

In the old days, we used to listen to the radio or watch the tv to check on the weather. Especially what was coming in the next day or two. These outlets provided a vague sort of general idea, but you really couldn’t count on them. Sometimes they were right on target, other times you wondered just what area that report had been meant for. It certainly wasn’t where you’re living.

Weather science—and I’m not sure that isn’t an oxymoron—keeps coming up with new systems to track and predict the weather.

But weather is capricious. It’s flighty. Completely unreliable and sometimes downright cranky. It feels no sense of responsibility to notify any media of its intentions. Yet humans, in their infinite wisdom, or possibly chutzpah, keep trying to predict it. Let’s face it, weather clearly doesn’t want to be predictable and the harder we try to pin it down, the harder it tries to give us the slip.

It’s usually successful.

I just mentioned the old days. I’m exaggerating as I tend to do. Of course, we can still get weather reports from those media, but how much more fun it is to check your phone every eight minutes to see how things have changed. Or not. Or just to kill a few seconds if you’re bored.

I’ve owned three smart phones in the past eight years. I’m also on my third weather app, although they didn’t match up with the phones. The first two just decided to stop playing with me. I couldn’t think of anything I’d done to offend them, but one day they were gone with no explanation.

Fortunately, weather apps are a dime a dozen. Hmm. That phase doesn’t work here since all the ones I’ve used are free. Although they are plentiful.

Each one had its own quirks and over time I learned how seriously I could take their info. The app I’m using now has lots of detail. One of my favorites is a little bar graph that shows you how hard the rainfall is going to be during the coming hour—drizzle, steady or downpour. Sometimes it matches up with what I can see out the window. Sometimes not.

It also tells me when the rain or snow is going to start or stop. And it doesn’t settle for vague predictions like late morning or early evening. It will say that the rain will begin in 11 minutes.

My husband summed it up nicely when he said, “It may not be accurate, but it’s very precise.”