Annoyed at weather forecasts (rant alert)

[Nerull]

I currently do not have a car. Thus, I take the bus everywhere. On the weekdays, it really doesn't matter much if it is raining or not (I need to go to work either way). However, the weekends are a different story. I generally like to go out and do stuff on my weekends, and that means lots of travelling around on the bus, and the required waits at (generally uncovered) bus stops, and walking to and from the bus stop. If I know it is going to have thunderstorms (not just rain; water doesn't bother me, electricity and water does) then I generally stay home on the weekend (rent movies, etc.), since I don't want to get stuck with lightning hitting while I am waiting at an uncovered bus stop.

Well, I have to go in today and pull 3 hours at work. Afterwards, I was thinking of going out from there. There's only one problem:

The Local Forecast:

• Weather Channel: no chance of rain, other than morning clouds nothing whatsoever either today or tomorrow
• Local 24 hour news channel: 50% chance of thunderstorms today, 40% this evening and tomorrow

Usually they are close to each other on most days, but you can't get much more different. I hop on the internet to check my home page, and it is "brought to you by the Weather Channel", so of course they show no thunderstorms. I checked another station's local forecast last night, and they had a 40% chance of thunderstorms. However, none of those stations are going to have a news show on until after I leave for work, so I'm stuck with the two above.

So, am I just supposed to average them out and say I have a 25% chance of getting stuck in a thunderstorm? Listen to one and give the one-finger salute to the other? I have a better solution. I look outside when I get out of work, and if it doesn't look like I am about to get dumped on at the moment, I will go do stuff around town (I may get stuck, but oh well). It's probably more accurate than they are, anyway.

I just find it annoying that they can't at least get into the ballpark with one another. Yes, I know that they are not terribly accurate to begin with, but at least they show you stuff happening in the weather and give you an idea what to expect. However, they don't even agree on the trends going on (Weather Channel shows the rain staying around Houston, while the local affiliate shows the rain spreading from there over to our area).

Sorry, I just had to rant about that.

[Arvon]

Just remember...these are the same clowns predicting global warming. Thirty years they were predicting a new ice age. (look it up in Time magazine from that time.

[Ladyzekke]

Well I hope you had a no-thunderstorm evening Nerull. I know what it's like, I took the bus/subway/walk deal for 8 years, and the weather is a big issue that is not an issue at all for those that drive. I always hated it that the summer t-storms often come up around 4:00 - 5:00pm, right when I'm getting off of work! I remember many just popping up while I was midway to the subway station (which took about 15 minutes of walking to get there) and the wind would turn my umbrella inside out, so that's useless. Most weather predictions suck, I have curses so many weathermen in my life it isn't even funny LOL. It gets sad it really does, I mean even I could do better than them I think sometimes, pay ME! [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] But, I will say though that I think some of those summer t-storms come up very quickly, and a lot of them are localized, so it may be difficult to predict them and broadcast them in time. I use weather.com and it seems to be the only best bet, cause it shows a map and shows where the rain is, only problem though is they only seem to update every half hour, doh! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

[Jorath Calar]

Hey if you don't like the weather, move.

[img]smile.gif[/img]

[Nerull]

Originally posted by ladyzekke: Well I hope you had a no-thunderstorm evening Nerull. I know what it's like, I took the bus/subway/walk deal for 8 years, and the weather is a big issue that is not an issue at all for those that drive. I always hated it that the summer t-storms often come up around 4:00 - 5:00pm, right when I'm getting off of work! I remember many just popping up while I was midway to the subway station (which took about 15 minutes of walking to get there) and the wind would turn my umbrella inside out, so that's useless. Most weather predictions suck, I have curses so many weathermen in my life it isn't even funny LOL. It gets sad it really does, I mean even I could do better than them I think sometimes, pay ME! [img]graemlins/hehe.gif[/img] But, I will say though that I think some of those summer t-storms come up very quickly, and a lot of them are localized, so it may be difficult to predict them and broadcast them in time. I use weather.com and it seems to be the only best bet, cause it shows a map and shows where the rain is, only problem though is they only seem to update every half hour, doh! [img]tongue.gif[/img]

Actually, a trained monkey rolling dice could probably do better than them...

However, other than one part of the day where it rained for 5 minutes, it was just on-and-off cloudy and sunny. So the Weather Channel was pretty much dead on stating no thunderstorms. However, the reason it irked me so much is that the local guys also have the radar going every ten minutes, and there have been times they have been right and the Weather Channel has been wrong. Oh well, now they are going back and forth about if it will/how much it will rain tomorrow. Morons...

[Ladyzekke]

LOL, my favorite is when they say "Severe Storms are occurring in many areas, the updated Storm Patrol (!) forecast next......(after the commercial).