Forecasting The Weather

Question- What do hitting a baseball and forecasting the weather have in
common?

Answer- You can fail 7 out of 10 times and still have a nice career.

That may be a bit of an exaggeration but you get the picture. We don’t expect a baseball player to get a hit every at-bat and we certainly don’t expect the meteorologist to always nail the forecast but we tend to rely on both. When they fail we’re not happy and when they are correct we often say “that’s what their paid to do” so both careers do share some similarities.

Weather forecasting has certainly changed dramatically over the years. When I was younger I always remember the forecast being pretty much today, tonight and tomorrow and for the most part storms were talked about a couple of days in advance. It’s a different picture now with the ever advancing technology in which we get 5-day, 7-day and even 10-day forecasts and storm talk comes well in advance of when we can even see it on a map.

However because of all these advances we want results and accuracy and I’m sure our own Alan Kasper will tell you that it’s often an in-exact science. Take for example Saturday when just about everyone and every place told you that it was not going to be a beach day. Even at 8AM the Weather Channel made it look like most of the day would come with clouds and thunderstorms and obviously people paid attention…and stayed away. As I began my morning walk on the boardwalk in Seaside it looked more like a Tuesday than a Saturday. I decided to head to the beach afterwards, expecting to be chased at some point by the impending rain. Well it never happened and I stayed on the beach until 3:30 on what turned out to be nearly a perfect day.

In the “what have you done for me lately” department it would be easy to second guess all the forecasters but in fairness it was raining pretty good in portions of northern Ocean County while the sun was shining at the beach.
Sometimes you just have to look out the window and go with what your eyes see….not what your ears hear.