Skip to main content

What a flock

The illustrious team of professional weather guessers at KCRG-TV 9 have unveiled their latest attempt at making excuses for why they can't seem to freaking get it right, for cripes sake.

Last night, on the 10 p.m. newscast, Little Joshie Thunderpants (or whoever...I think, they're really all equally, interchangeably incompetent) revealed to viewers a radar view of the entire state of Iowa. He pointed out the series of green patches in the western half of the state that one would assume signaled rain showers in the vicinity (because after all, that IS the point of these gizmos, right).

That's when his dastardly plan came into play. You'd think that was rain, he noted. But, aha! That's where you'd be wrong.

He then claimed that those blobs were actually the wind turbines from wind(mill) farms in western Iowa reflecting or refracting or emitting or whatever it is they supposedly do to show up on a Doppler radar.

So next time the green blobs show up, they might be storms. Or not.

My husband was once watching a weathercast in mid-Missouri when a forecaster insisted that his newfangled radar was so incredibly accurate and sensitive, it could detect a flock of birds flying nearby. The guy offered no chance of precipitation. We woke up the next morning to a rather startling snowstorm.

There was another time the weatherpeople were intently explaining the phenomenon of the "invisible precipitation" which shows up on the radar, but magically disappears before it hits the ground. I wish I could figure out how to harness that power for use with some "invisible credit card payments."

Just to be clear: These radars and their operators can find the birds. They can find the windmills. But can they do what they get paid to do, which ostensibly has something to do with jet streams and barometric pressure? I'd not exactly be going out on a limb (which I'm sure could be detected by sky-warn-four-accuweather-eagle-eye-satellite-radar) in guessing that they cannot. Try Googling "weather forecasters suck" sometime. Happy reading. It's nice to know I'm not making up this stuff in my head.

Even though they are.

And I leave you with this anonymous bit of haha from the 'Net:

So much for that forecast. I just finished shoveling four inches of "Partly Cloudy" off my sidewalks.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Ho, Ho, Ho, How Many Times Can I Use "I'm too busy" as an Excuse?

I haven't had time to write. Work, swim meet volunteering, holiday decorating and shopping. But truthfully, I've not been in much of a mood to write anything anyway. Last night we put up the tree and Santa chachkies, and I drank my first egg nog of the season, so perhaps I'll be in a cheerier mood. Also, I have spent some time writing the annual Schoon holiday newsletter. If you happen to get a copy, treat it like a drinking game. Every time I make you roll your eyes, take a drink. Nog, wassail, Everclear. Whatever gets you through. One sure way to assist with merriment motivation is listening to Christmas carols. I'm not going to get into a debate over what truly constitutes a carol. You can "Jesus is the reason for the season" yourself until you turn blue; I generally lean toward the secular end of the holiday tune spectrum. And if you just gasped at my use of holiday instead of Christmas, go suck on a candy cane. It's my blog and my opinions. Deal. ...

IHATE IHOP Update

Tim went a few rounds, verbally, with the IHOP manager on Sunday and ended up getting our meal for half price. He still had to pay, though. I do not think that these people understand the severity of their incompetence. Or perhaps they just do not care. Someone commented to us that perhaps we should tell the IHOP folks what happened to the last restaurant that did us wrong. Recall the lactating masses who came out in support of us when we were booted from Hoover House restaurant in West Branch because I refused to breastfeed my baby in the bathroom? Remember the stories that ran in every newspaper and on every TV news show in the state -- and beyond? I'd like to point out that the Hoover House (which interestingly enough doubled as a venue for wet T-shirt contests on weekends) went out of business after our little incident. And for those of you who were befuddled and wondering how the police got involved on Sunday...someone from IHOP took the time to run out and write down our lice...

Who knew...

'Tis the season for bridal bliss. 'Tis also the season for the accompanying reception dance. And what's a wedding reception without that most unique of all marriage celebration dance numbers: The Chicken Dance. You know the drill. Polka starts, beak-quacking hand gestures, flapping, butt shimmying, and clapping ensue. A fun time is had by all (especially if there's an open bar). What you may not know is that: 1. This oom-pah song's origins rest with a Swiss according player named Werner Thomas who wrote it, most accounts say, in the 1950s. It originally was called the Duck Dance. 2. It is NOT German or Austrian, despite the images its roll-out-the-barrel-ish feelings it might conjure up. 3. A fellow named Norm Edlebeck, who was a bandleader from Wisconsin, introduced America to the Chicken Dance on TV's PM Magazine in 1982. 4. More than 140 versions of it have been recorded worldwide, including Walt Disney Records, together making more than 40,000,000 records (o...