The Weatherman Struck Out

The weatherman struck out this week.

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A doctor I used to fish, a man by the name of Jim McCully, wrote a fascinating book called Beyond the Moon. The book is about how the tides work and why they are so hard to predict. Sea level is anything but.

The United States government publishes a book annually called the Coast Pilot, which gives tidal predictions for the year at places all along the lengthy coastline of the USA. They use computers to make these predictions, of course.

At the time McCully published his book, sixteen separate factors (if my memory serves, been a long time since I read the book) went into the computer model that makes the prediction. At least eight other factors, considered to be of minor importance, are not used. And a big, important factor- the weather- can’t be used, since weather can’t be predicted a year in advance.

So the tidal prediction is exactly that. A prediction.

Weather forecasts are also predictions. I took a meteorology course during my university time, and if nothing else learned that predicting the behavior of giant air masses is extremely difficult. Air frequently doesn’t do what you expect it to. I wonder how many factors go into weather prediction models?

It’s hard to predict the weather 24 hours in advance, never mind a year.

All that having been said, the weatherman missed three straight forecasts this week, by miles. Strike three, you’re out!

The forecasts for Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday all read like this- “Showers likely in the morning, with scattered thunderstorms, increasing into the afternoon. Rain chance 70 percent.”

Where I’m located, we had some light rain in the evening on those days. During the day it was partly cloudy with lots of sunshine, beautiful days.

This was my expectation. It did not come to pass. Image cribbed from the internet.

Did I go fishing? I did not! Not wanting to get caught out in the likely lightning, I did not go fishing. So I was partly perturbed with the forecaster for bad predictions, and partly perturbed with myself for putting too much faith in them. I certainly know better.

I didn’t wet a line this week. I did spend time preparing for an upcoming fishing trip with Mike Conneen, however. I’ll be very prepared after all that prep time!

Please, wish us luck!

That’s the weatherman struck out report. Thanks for reading!

Every day is a blessing. Don’t waste it- Go fishing! Go paddling! Take a walk! Stay active!

John Kumiski
www.johnkumiski.com
www.spottedtail.com
www.spottedtail.com/blog

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