Predicting the weather
In the winter here in my new home of Greensburg, Pennsylvania, the meteorologists seem to have a problem predicting the weather. Sometimes their wisdom points to a bad ice storm on its way to clobber us. This prompts Karen to drive all the way back to my workplace and drop off the car. Only to have it merely rain all day and night. Other times Karen and I will check the weather channel and the computer for the latest forecast (we are quite thorough the two of us) and find that there is not supposed to be any precipitation what-so-ever. So it looks like a perfect day for Karen to drive me to work. This is almost always the day of the surprise snow storm that no one knew was coming. Having been born and raised in the "Sunshine State" I'm not used to such glaring mistakes when it comes to the weather. Sure the weather person might say that it's going to be mostly sunny one day and it turns out to be somewhat sunny. But for the most part it's hot and wet and it rains a lot. Here in the Mid-Atlantic we have a wide variety of names for the wet substance that falls from the sky in the winter. For example there's sleet (I'm still not sure what that is), snow, hail, freezing rain, and of course my personal favorite wintry mix. This variety of titles doesn't seem to help when it comes to predicting the weather. At least this unpredictable weather only lasts for about two months. After that we return to more predictable things like rain, wind, sun, and clouds. All of this weather talk got me to thinking about changing my profession. I'm starting to think it would be great to be a weather person here in Pittsburgh. For instance if I felt like being a slack ass one day I could just stand in front of the green screen, turn on the weather map, close my eyes and throw some icons up on the map. A little wind here and how about some wintry mix there. No one seems to get angry at them when they're wrong. People even seem to like their local weather guesser. So if you turn on your T.V. and see me blathering away about the wintry mix that's on its way you'll know why.
Love and Peace,
RJ
