An accurate forecast: The weather is always hyped

To tell if so-called experts are hoping you won’t notice they have no clue what they’re talking about, all you need to do is ask one question: Is this what was promised or are they simply talking?All over the radio and television — and even the Internet — we are being fed a steady stream of weather, 99 percent of which is news about weather that has already been, not what is about to come.The evening news comes on to tell us that it was “55 degrees today” — not the forecast. Or you will hear over the radio, “It’s raining” — not a forecast. Or they will recap the terrible storms that hit the country yesterday — not a forecast.When it comes to the weather, we all want to know what’s coming, not what has been. “Today hit a record high” — not a forecast. “The wettest winter on record” — not a forecast. “Compared to last year”— not a forecast. “Schools are closed today because of snow” — not a forecast. Come on weathermen and women, stick to forecasting the weather.Part of the problem is that the expensive systems we put in place to help predict the weather erased the backbone of the data collection that great meteorologists relied upon. When they put up satellites that he helped design, Len Snellman — then head of most of the National Weather Service (NWS) — told Congress that the idea was to augment our data collection centers, not replace them. Congress instead cut all the small weather stations across the country. Schools, post offices, public buildings — these all had weather stations feeding data to a more accurate mapping of impending weather.Satellites were supposed to provide coverage for those regions where there was scant coverage, as well as provide an overview. Television networks quickly realized they could show pretty satellite pictures and sell more cornflakes, all dressed up as weather forecasting. But every image they put on the screen is past weather or at best current weather. Not one image from space can show you tomorrow’s weather.In an effort to look more professional, the weather presenters were also given Doppler radar images to amuse the viewer. Doppler is absolutely current and not one teeny tiny bit into the future. Asked at Daytona for a weather forecast to see if the Daytona 500 could be run Sunday, the expert looked at the Doppler radar image and said, “It looks like it’s raining.” Open the window and you can get that report.Len once received a teletype of a prognosis chart for the next day’s weather from the NWS headquarters during the Voyager flight 25 years ago. I watched him rub his hand across the barometric lines, shaking his head, “Mother Nature wouldn’t do that.” He called the head of the NWS, Rich Wagner, and asked for all the tiny data points. Rich assured him that the computer couldn’t have missed anything.Rich knew Len was hardly ever wrong, so across the fax machine came all these data figures, pages of them. Len set to work with his pencil, human brain, a clean sheet of paper and decades of experience, and voila! A data point (Bakersfield) had been missed. Put that on the map and the low-pressure area moved 25 miles.Those data points Len was using no longer exist, since no one is collecting them. We’re doomed to weather forecasting across huge areas of land as all the in-between stations are gone. North American weather forecasting sounds like this: There’s a storm brewing out west and there will be rain on the East Coast. Not really useful, and the media knows it. So they spend 90 percent of their weather time telling you how hot or cold, wet or dry, windy or calm it was today.As Len would say, “Any fool can tell you what the weather has been.”Peter Riva, a former resident of Amenia Union, now lives in New Mexico.