...Raining on optimism

As you may or may not be aware, the weather recently has been pretty strange in this neck of the woods...

I know its probably no simple task to "accurately" report the weather given the amount of historical data and recordings available to our meteorologists, but whatever that task is, its one that must be repeated daily to sate the demands of public curiosity. Surely this has been completely automated now to the point where relatively few people at the [tv network, website, corporation, newspaper, etc...] actually know anything about atmospheric science, and I have no doubt that weathermen are little more than grinning marionettes who don't know a pyrocumulus from a pyromaniac.

Anyway, the root of my beef with weather forcasting today isn't so much their accuracy as it is the way they relay the info. For instance, here's the 10-day forcast from a few minutes ago:


As someone who studies visual representations of ideas in all their forms, I'm apalled by the inconsistency this chart is populated with! Lets take next tuesday as an example shall we?

So let me get this straight... there are gonna be isolated t-storms with peeking sun, though only at a thirty percent chance.. what's it gonna be if fate falls on the 70% side which, for all we know, could be anything!

For fuck's sake, which geniuses came up with this method? Since when do we report what probably isn't going to happen? If you're gonna tell me theres a thirty percent chance of rain, at least have the picture depict what might happen if it doesn't rain... Its the honest truth that when people look at charts like these, they don't ponder silly shit like the inaccuracies that threaten knowledge; and furthermore, it is our responsibility as ethical members of society to not knowingly lead people astray, especially under the guise of accuracy.

The geeky, zit riddled, kid in me wonders if theres a conspiracy going down here... Do they deliberately show spooky icons of tempests to boost umbrella sales? Maybe its GM or the government trying to zap life back into the corpse of the american auto-industry by discouraging the public from cycling or walking to work more frequently... hmmm