Some people joke about the Weather Bureau being a non-prophet organization, but that’s unfair. The National Weather Service, as it’s officially known, makes consistently reliable short term forecasts now.
” A 50 percent chance of rain, sleet or snow late in the day” may not be that precise but it’s useful enough for you to postpone your golf game or parachute jump and to check your sump pump and don your long johns.
One of the worst inaccurate forecasts for the New York City area was in March of 1888 when warm rain showers were predicted, but instead, the disastrous Blizzard of ’88 brought 40 inches of snow, 50-foot drifts and over 25o fatalities.
I was sidetracked by the bureau’s second most inaccurate forecast. I was a truck driver’s helper, headed for New York City from Jersey on December 26, 1947 when four inches of snow were predicted for the Metro area. My truck driver said his powerful Reo could handle that easily so we crossed the George Washington Bridge to make our deliveries. We ended up snowbound in the Bronx and spent the night in a saloon with a tipsy crowd of stranded commuters whose street cars stood outside behind snowbanks.
Two feet of snow had paralyzed Manhattan and closed the G.W. Bridge. I was too young to accept the consoling Irish bartender’s offer of a warming snort on the house. The saloon’s radio confirmed the G.W. Bridge was closed, but some stalwart Jerseyans were walking across to get home.
Long range forecasts of seven days or more can be meteorological educated guesses based on a number of computer models trying to make sense out of the dynamic nature of the atmosphere. What we hear on the evening news is a description of next weeks “most likely” weather, but “stand by”.
We can also make use of time-honored signs like aching arthritic joints that indicate low barometric pressure and other bad weather signs like mare’s tail clouds, mackerel skies and rings around the moon that are said to predict storms.
If the birds start heading south earlier in the year and squirrels have bushier tails, tune up your snow blower. And if you hear I’ve rented a bungalow at the Jersey shore for a week next summer, expect drenching rain all seven days.
There’s the story of the modern Indian chief who was asked by his tribesmen if they should prepare for a severe winter on the reservation. The chief, fresh out of Harvard, had no idea, but to save face, he recommended they begin gathering firewood immediately and during the following weeks, he urged intensified timber chopping.
Around the end of November he was getting nervous. So he made an anonymous phone call to the local weather bureau to ask for that winter’s prediction.
“It’s going to be very severe, a record breaker, the head meteorologist told him.
“Is that based on a jet stream shift, or satellite data?” he asked.
“Somewhat, but to a greater extent it’s based on observations of a local Indian tribe that has stored up a mountain of firewood on their reservation.”
Imagine That 