The Unpredictable Weather

The guidebooks will invariably tell you that the British weather is unpredictable. This is true. What the guidebooks don't tell you is that it hasn't stopped the BBC from trying. What the guidebooks don't further tell you is that the BBC has come up with an almost entirely accurate way to predict what the weather will not be.

Like most weather-predicting sorts, the BBC maintains a weather website, so if you happen to be interested in their prognostications about whether they think tomorrow will be sunny, rainy, mild, or blistering with a 30% chance of green cheese falling from the sky, you can flip to their handy website. You may, if you wish, access aforesaid website here. The problem, or perhaps the brilliance, is that the forecast is almost entirely always wrong. If the BBC has predicted that it will be rainy and cold tomorrow, it is almost entirely certain to be sunny and hot.

Now, to be sure, meteorologists are almost universally jeered for their inability to predict the upcoming weather. Oddly enough, despite this, we keep coming back and listening to them, as if we haven't learned better yet. (Well, some of us anyway - I have to admit I tend to get my weather directly from the source: "Look, honey, I'm getting wet. It must be going to rain today.") Nonetheless, despite the fact that any meteorologist knows infinitely more about cirrus clouds, atmospheric conditions, and cold fronts than I do, and the almost certainty that the BBC probably has the best and brightest meteorologists in the UK, the apparent inability of the BBC to provide any sort of reasonable forecast has me befuddled.

I have my sneaking suspicions that someone behind the scenes is orchestrating an immense practical joke, which only meteorologists are let in on. (Which is another question - what exactly do meteors have to do with the weather? But I digress.) I imagine the secret consortium of meteorologists (henceforward to be known as weathermen, due to the difficulty of consistently typing meteorologist - meteorologist, meteorologist, meteorologist - you try it), anyway, as I was saying, the secret consortium of weathermen meeting a couple of weeks in advance of the forecasts and reviewing the weather models for the upcoming weeks. Noting that the forecast is for sun, sun, and more sun, they promptly predict cold and rain, chuckling to themselves as the entire population bundles up and carries about their umbrellas while the sun beats down relentlessly on their backs. "That was a good one," they say, as they promptly go on to predict weeks of sunny weather during the biggest downpour of rain ever seen, and getting on their secret little weather websites to show the pictures of all the drenched ignoramuses that actually listened to them. I suspect that this is particularly the case with the BBC, as this does provide some sort of logical explanation for the otherwise seemingly impossible situation of having so many enormously knowledgeable and talented people getting paid to get the weather so absolutely and horrendously wrong.

I suppose that after the above commentary, you may be wondering why, exactly, (especially if I am so aloof as to not heed weather reports as I claim) I am writing about this. Well, to wit, earlier this week, on the front page of my e-mail service was an article about the imminent cold and snow that would hit, well, today, actually. I must admit, I had my doubts. Nonetheless, I dutifully checked the BBC website yesterday, which reported that, yes, cold and snow was coming today. And, so, I pondered, as I walked home in the 55F degree weather under blue skies, how could they be so wrong?