Went to bed last night shortly after watching the local news. The weather forecaster displayed a colorful, easy-to-read map indicating expected snowfall accumulations. My town appeared to be in the dark blue band, representing 2 to 3 inches of snow! Now, where you live, that might not be a lot. But here in the deep South, it's a rare and delightful treat. I was excited. OK. Not really. I woke up this morning and hurried over to the window like a child on Christmas morning running to look under the tree. What did I see? A bag of switches, pretty much. "Hmm," I thought to myself. "This snow bears an uncanny resemblance to rain."
That's pretty much par for the course for our local weather forecasters. To them, accurately predicting snow seems to be about as difficult as picking the winning Powerball numbers. As a conservative estimate, I'd say they've called for snow at least seven or eight times this winter. That's roughly equivalent to the total number of snow flurries I have seen all year. Seven or eight. So honestly, I didn't get excited when I saw the forecast. It's pretty much just a big joke around here now.
Maybe I could be a local weather forecaster. There seems to be no job accountability. And I love their excuses. "Sometimes snow can be hard to predict." Really now? That's like a baseball player batting .200 saying, "A baseball is hard to hit." What a nice little built-in excuse. The weather is hard to predict. So basically, their whole job is based on predicting something that they've already admitted cannot be predicted. And I'll bet the only people who disagree are the weather forecasters. And their mothers. And even some of them are starting to get suspicious.
As Seinfeld says: "What's with the five-day forecast? That's something else they try to pull over on us. There is no five-day forecast. If the five-day forecast was accurate, we'd only have to watch the weather every five days."
Oh yeah, the Super Bowl was last night. Here are my thoughts:
- I never remember this much talk the day after the Super Bowl concerning the officiating (here and here). There were for sure a couple of big penalties at curious times.
- The commercials were the least-interesting that I can remember for a Super Bowl. The car commercials, especially. I think I'd not buy one of those just because the ads were so bad. I did like the one commercial where they were playing backyard football and the guy planted his girlfriend. That was hilarious.
- All Super Bowl halftimes are pretty much boring to me. This one wasn't much different. I am, however, amazed that Mick Jagger can still run and jump around like that. They've got to be well into their sixties.
- And most importantly, why are they still counting Super Bowls in Roman numerals? I'm sure when it was I, II, and III, it was kinda cool. But I mean, really. In four years, we'll be watching Super Bowl XLIV? I think it's time to let it go.
And, that's about it. 24 is on tonight! That makes me happy. And GH is on SoapNet after that. Port Charles is about to be overcome by an encephalitis epidemic! It's really stressing me out. If anything happens to Luke, I'll boycott TV forever. (OK, probably not really.)
"Her hat is hanging by the door. The one she bought in Mexico. It blocked the wind, it stopped the rain. She'd never leave that one..."
I can't even remember what snow looks or feels like... I can't wait to go home and hopefully head to the mountain to do some winter frolicking... but I would even be content with flurries...
ReplyDeleteAND
I COMPLETLEY agree about the Super Bowl commercials... the worst in years. that Cave-Man/ FedEx one made me irritated that someone spent that much money on ridiculousness.
Urg... between that and some of those calls.... I am lucky it was such a good game...
Your post made me laugh because where I live, predicting warm weather-or rain for that matter-seems to be beyond our weather forecasters ability.
ReplyDeleteThere was a quiz on TV once asking "How far out can weather forcasters predict the weather?" And I said 2 hours ago! But the real answer was 30 days out. I was like, "ya gotta be kiddin me!"
ReplyDeleteLately we've been getting a lot of predictions for snow, but it never "comes off the mountains." Which means if you go up in the mountains (where it's higher) you'll see snow, but if you're down here at Mile-Hi no snow, no rain, just lots and lots of dry everthing living out wind.
We didn't watch too much of the Stuperbowl as I got tired quickly of them showing re-plays while I was missing what was going on the field! What was with that? And then they're showing John Madden & the other guy...who wants to see that????
And the commercials were a bummer too. Dh asks "They paid 2.5 Million for that???"
Yay for 24!
ReplyDeleteBoo for Mick Jagger!
OC Girl: Frolicking in the snow? And what would you be wearing? ;-)
ReplyDeleteI'd settle for some flurries, too.
Jen: That's interesting. I guess you get plenty of snow there.
Renee: Haha, two hours ago. I like that. Yeah. The commercials were, for the most part, horrible.
Southie: I'm just over the Super Bowl halftime show. If I were other networks, I'd plan 30 minutes of something really good during halftime and advertise the crap out of it.
Our forecasters are wrong all the time, too. They always predict 6-12 inches and then we get, like, 2. Which is fine with me because snow is neither pleasant nor a surprise in Chicago. The kids at school get all jacked up for a snow day that will never come. In all my years of school in the Chicagoland area, I've never had a snow day. We're very efficient at snow removal out here.
ReplyDeleteI'm just glad that Keith Richards didn't have a wardrobe malfunction.
ReplyDeleteThink the last time it snowed here was December. We had spring until today
ReplyDeleteloved your post
I was in Huntsville on Sunday and I heard on the radio that there was a chance of snow...
ReplyDeleteI was jealous!
Happy Birthday to you...what day is your b'day?
I miss snow.
ReplyDeleteWe never get any.
Period.
As for the officiating . . . oh hell, give it a rest people.
And the halftime show was SCARY!
I love the Stones, I really do, but the females and EVEN the males in the room were turning their heads and screaming NNOOOOOOO!! at Mick's gyrating form. Particularly decked out as he was in a sequined short top, hip huggers and a bedazzled belt. Oh, so scary.
They're not much better in predicting the weather here in the great white north. I hate nothing more when the weather guys tell us that there's a huge snowfall coming. I plot it out in my head...with that much snow, there's got to be a delayed opening at work or maybe no work at all! Everyone in this area scrambles out to the supermarket and/or liquor store to buy everything they will need for the next month. As if we'd ever get that snowed in. We stay up late, surely there will be no work the next day, and quickly it's rise and shine time and there's nothing on the ground. Not a flake. Geez, I hate when that happens!!
ReplyDeleteThis is the first time I've visited your blog, but let's just say I live in the area.
ReplyDeleteSherry: We woke up to rain. Not really a suprise around here.
The last time we saw more than a flurry in this area I think was a couple of years ago. My kids have yet to see snow that they will remember. The last really good snowfall was in 1992 (I think) and we got eleven inches.
Tara: Two inches here would shut things down for at least a couple of days.
ReplyDeleteThe big man: I'm with ya on that.
Pia: Very mild winter here. Finally had a couple of days with highs in the 40's yesterday and today.
Sherry: No reason to be jealous. We got nothing. I was born on the 12th.
Meghan: Haha. Yeah, everytime he'd start gyrating, my instinct was to turn my head.
Xinh: No, I hated the godaddy.com ads, too. Too many of the commercials ended with me thinking, "That's it?" or "What was that?"
Carnealian: One of our local stations used to do a "Nowcast" during their weather. As in, what the weather is like at that moment. I thought, now that's the only true weather.
hipster: Thanks for stopping by. Seems like we used to get more snow when I was little. I know I remember building snowmen and making snow cream. But not in a long time.
Superbowl XL turned out to be mediocre at best. Yes, some bad calls, but that is part of living in the moment people. The only thing worse than the commercials was all the cry-baby fingerpointing afterward. We watched an hour or so of the puppy bowl on Animal Planet. It reminds me of "The Race" where Jerry and what's his name re-race a game from high school. Or when Jerry and George are doing the "choose" and Jerry wins and George says "I should have taken odds", so then nobody really wins. I think the Superbowl should be sent to timeout if the teams cannot demonstrate sportsmanship. I know I don't want to listen to it.
ReplyDeleteCongrats on the snow. How much did you end up with down there?
Dear Sir Bone,
ReplyDeleteAm posting snow to you by FedEx immediately. Have a large supply due to three-day lake effect. Hope it makes your day, because it didn't make mine. LMAO.
Madness
The calls were suspect. I wonder if it was rigged. I mean I was rooting for the Steelers, but I agree there were a few calls that heavily favored them. And Holmgren looked entirely too relaxed. Dude. Bust a blood vessel or something. Stuffing all that anxiety isn't good for you. And where was the Steelers defense? I mean Polamalu wasn't involved in any of the big defensive plays. I was looking for him to tear up the field. Hasselbeck just lost it there at the end. He was so calm and composed for the first 3 quarters. Then he just slowly unraveled. Roethlisberger looked sad the first quarter. But that TD pass he made was pure gold. Planting himself at the line of scrimmage. It was beautiful.
ReplyDeleteDorothy: Jerry raced Duncan Meyer.
ReplyDeleteHow much snow did we get? Zero. None. Zilch. That was my whole point. They always call for it and we never get any.
Debby: Got your package. It had all melted though. Next time, maybe a refrigerated truck would be better :)
Lass: Well, the Steelers winning was sure the better story, with Bettis retiring and Cowher coaching so long without winning one.
Of course, I'm a conspiracy-theorist by nature ;-)
We have had that same problem here in Missourah. If it's not once a week, it's at least once every other week that the forecasters are predicting snow here. Has it snowed yet? Ummm, maybe once???
ReplyDeleteAnd in regards to the Superbowl...I was sooo not impressed with Mick Jager. He sang off key and when he sang the "I can't get no satisfaction" song, did you notice that he said "twy" instead of "try"? That drove me nuts!!!
Duncan Meyer. Ahhhhh. That's right. "I choose not to race"
ReplyDeleteThe weather channel had you all plastered with a foot or more of snow. I experienced a similar phenomenon this last summer in MO. The rainstorms, no matter how large, would die 2 miles west (we could actually see rain, it would just never get to us). It would then hop the Mississippi River 10 miles to the east of us, kick up and spawn tornados.
Chickadee: I didn't notice the "twy" but as someone else mentioned, the dancing was a bit frightening.
ReplyDeleteDorothy: Nope. Nothing. Rumor has it a couple of people saw a few flakes. But I didn't see the first one.