THINGS TO KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT

by GENE MASCOLI

Gene's Columns Are Archived HERE

THINGS TO KEEP YOU UP AT NIGHT

Summer Outlook -- Drought

Here's the weather forecast -- drought conditions in the Pacific Northwest and Southeast are expected to linger through August, as the Midwest experiences cool, wet conditions this summer according to NOAA.

NOAA's latest seasonal outlook calls for the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions to share the possibility of a drier-than-normal summer. Warmer-than-normal temperatures are predicted for the deep South.

"Drought continues to be the major concern for many areas of the country," said retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Jack Kelly, director of NOAA's National Weather Service. "Areas of eastern Georgia, the western Carolinas, and the Florida peninsula are entering their fourth year of drought." Kelly added a lack of precipitation in the Northwest, where the summers are usually dry, will provide "little, to no, relief" from drought conditions.

Now I thought to myself, "how do they do this forecasting?"

After all, I live in the San Francisco Bay Area. Our weather comes in two flavors, it's not raining and the sky is blue, it's above 68 degrees and, it's cloudy/rainy, a bit windy and below 68 degrees. The former is anywhere between April and October, the latter between November and March. That's about it. The only real variables are whether a Pacific storm is coming in and the high temperature for the day.

Okay then, how do the local forecasters do in my area? Badly, I'm afraid to say. They have satellite images of these big storms out on the Pacific bearing down on the California coast. Their job, simply to figure out when it hits and where. How hard can this be? Folks, it must be pretty hard, because they usually get it wrong.

As for forecasting temperature, they are not much better. For instance, it is supposed to be 90 degrees today. It's warm. They got that right. But it isn't 90 degrees, it's more like 82 degrees. They do the wrap-up the next day, sometimes explaining what weather conditions messed up their forecast, but most often just moving on to the next day.

If we had their job, and we blew it as much as these folks did, we'd be fired. They remind me of stock market analysts. Notice how they can pinpoint with accuracy, on any given day why millions of shares of stock are changing hands. It's this company's earning report, it's the Feds policy, or investors are nervous. Gosh, they seem to know a lot of stuff. But just like weather guys and gals, they're often wrong.

Now that I've cast aspersions on two honorable professions and probably alienated many of my site visitors, let me take back what I said. These guys and gals, both weather forecasters and stock analysts, do a great job. Honest, that's what I think. What I also think is that it is next to impossible to forecast the weather or forecast why the stock market moves on a particular day. That's because each of these things is reliant on millions of separate pieces of information and data. What weather forecasters and stock market analysts do is extrapolate from the data before them and GUESS. Sorry, but it's true. If it wasn't a guess, they'd be right more often.

And, if you think it is tough here in California to forecast the weather, where almost all the weather blows in from the Pacific where you can see it coming thousands of miles in advance, imagine what it's like being a weather guy or gal in the midwest or New England where weather is moving in from all directions at once over various land and water masses. Impossible.

One of my favorite books was "Chaos, Making A New Science" It's still a great read. One premise of the book is that long-range forecasting is doomed. This due to the 'butterfly effect'. If you're not familiar with the 'butterfly effect', simply put, a butterfly flapping its wings in Australia creates small perturbations that cascade upward through the entire weather system. Now who could predict weather when it is dependant on billions of butterfly effects?

If you follow the logic of my argument further, you get to the point where science smacks popular culture up 'side the head. Ask anyone about global warming or building more power plants in California, (if you haven't heard we can't keep the lights on) and there is a passionate diatribe on why this or why not that. I'm not choosing sides. I'm just asking you to consider that if trained professionals can't even predict the weather from day to day, how accurate can either side in the global warming debate be when talking about a system as complicated as the Earth and over a time span of billions of years?

*Images courtesy of NOAA Photo Library

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