Tuesday Evening

The temperature is hovering around 30 or 31 degrees, with a freezing mist which is starting to solidify on windows, driveways, etc. Accu-Hunch is calling for a high of only 19 tomorrow, so we'll see what happens. It's usually something other than what they predict.

UPDATE: the temp has dropped to 28, and it's snowing in parts of town.

I realize I'm awfully hard on the folks at the weather service - forecasting is pretty tough, considering that none of us can know the future. I know they have the satellite imagery, reports from other stations, and sophisticated software to help them make educated guesses.

Why then is it wrong, so often? At the risk of sounding like Ian Malcolm, chaos theory explains it - it's complex behavior based on complex systems. Given identical input, the forecast comes out differently each time.

There are too many factors which can combine in unexpected ways, providing radically different outcomes. How do you guess which model will be accurate? You don't, but you can play the 'law of averages' and select the model that seems to come up the most often, based on current conditions.

I said all that to say this: the forecast is rarely very accurate, and we're silly to think it might be otherwise. Of course we all want to know, but it probably won't happen.

Oh, well, life goes on, regardless.

It was a fairly quiet day at work, until the big LED sign out by the road went off. I called the sign company, which reported that they're getting no power. I called the electricians, who report that a large cable has apparently burnt in two, underground, and they'll have to pull up a light pole to fix it.

Go ahead, folks: make my day.