Do We Really Need Weather People?

Pat, weather people are ridiculous, right? We don’t need them, right?

Pat: Agreed.

Wait! Were you talking about the people who tend to be homely looking fellas or snappy looking women who pretend to know about what the clouds are going to do tomorrow, or did you mean people who had superpowers that enabled them to harness the unlimited forces of the earth’s meteorological elements, like Storm from X-Men?

If it’s the former, then, yeah...trash ‘em. But if it’s the latter...man, I wouldn’t mess with them.

Christian: I’m talking about the former. Those self-proclaimed clairvoyant types that pretend to have the ability to predict the future with their Doppler6000 or StormBuster1000 weather machines which we all know are just expensive wind chimes.

Now don’t get me wrong. The “weather” people that try and predict and follow hurricanes and tornadoes and such provide a valuable service. People’s lives are at stake in those cases. Those people are professionals. The weather people I don’t care for are the local boobs.

The nightly news seems to devote half of their time to the weather which is ridiculous considering they are just guessing. At their best they can tell you what the current weather is - which I can too without even using a wind chime - and then they are just guessing at the rest. It should take them all of 30 seconds to deliver the weather. But instead they display a bunch of fancy maps while waving their arms pretending like they have a clue as to what the weather is going to be like in a couple of days. They might as well be telling me the final score of the next ten Super Bowls.

I’m annoyed by the whole thing.

Pat: I gotta’ be honest with you, man...I don’t really think about weather much. Try not to, anyway. And I guess that means I don’t pay attention to weather people. I kinda’ just walk outside and hope I dressed right.

Come to think of it, I really don’t watch the news. Or even read a newspaper.

I think I might have turned into a hermit somewhere in the last ten years. Shit. I gotta’ get out more.

Christian: Well you might not want to go out right now because despite the fact that there isn’t a cloud in the sky the weather people are saying that it will be pouring down rain in the next ten minutes.

See how horrible that is? Granted, you can just ignore them. To be honest I don’t remember the last time I watched the news. Although I have been meaning to check in to see if that O.J. Simpson trial ever ended.

But even if you don’t pay any attention to them, doesn’t it irk you that there are people out there getting paid good money pretending to be soothsayers and society just accepts it?

Artist rendering of a weather person.

(source)

Pat: Well, I’d like to take you back even further. If you wonder who these yahoos on TV are, then consider: who the hell was Poor Richard and how did he know so goddamned much about everything at a time when I don’t think anybody knew anything except how to grow the food they ate and create countries?

And what, exactly, is an almanac?

I kinda’ think your weather-hatred might stem from him, so you might want to do a little research.

Christian: I googled who Poor Richard was and learned that it was the pseudonym used by Benjamin Franklin when writing his weather predicting almanacs. I did not know that.

So I then googled to see who Benjamin Franklin was and it turns out he was some kind of self-proclaimed wizard that claimed he could control electricity with his magic kites. Sounds like a complete lunatic if you ask me. But this just strengthens my argument that the whole idea of weather people is absurd.

Cuckoo. Cuckoo.

(source)

How are you not more outraged Pat?

Pat: Mmm...you gotta’ pick your battles, man. And I generally don’t battle with guys who can conjure lightning. Thunder, yes, but not lightning.

Don’t get me wrong...I’m with you. I think weather people are silly and unnecessary. I am slightly intrigued by the fact that the weatherperson demographic seems to be defined by inhumanly large and white teeth, though.

But I’m not gonna’ let ‘em get under my skin. They can’t use their Doppler 8 thingy to get under my skin, can they?

Christian: I doubt it since their dopplers always seem to have performance issues.