Weather I'm Right, Weather I'm Wrong

As I type this post, the birds are chirping outside my window, the sky is blue, the bright sunshine is bouncing off the dew on the leaves and I'd readily believe I was dead and in heaven if it weren't for the sound of the lawnmower outside. However, just 24 hours ago, the view from this very same window was one of such gloom and darkness that had Noah experienced anything remotely close to this he wouldn't have had any trouble convincing people to jump on his ark.


The weather these days has had the temperament of a 16 year old girl on her first date ("Ok we can hold hands. No second base! OK fine a little second base. No! Let's go back to first! Ooh let's go all the way. No, don't TOUCH me! Ooh I love you...") Naturally, it's all because of global warming and the world coming to an end (or maybe it's that time of the month for Storm). But in spite of this, we still have dedicated 'professionals' that monitor the sky, cloud formations, wind speeds and millimetres of rainfall and attempt in some bizarre way to predict the weather for the next few days.


How does one become a weatherman? Seriously, how twisted and sad must your childhood be for you to want to dedicate your life to watching the sky and telling an uncaring world when it's going to rain? Imagine the strength of such a person’s convictions, as he/she bravely endures the criticism and mockery of his/her peers as they all go to law school, business school, medical school etc and he/she plods off in the direction of the meteorological school. I actually had to google that to see if there was such a thing!


It’s not like they do a good job, at least not the ones in Sri Lanka. When was the last time they got a prediction right? Wait, let me rephrase – when was the last time they made an actual prediction? Every weather forecast starts off the same way; “Scattered showers in the North, North Central, Uva, Central, Western, Southern and Sabaragamuwa Provinces”. That’s seven out of our nine provinces, and the strategic insertion of the word “scattered” means that it may or may not rain where you are. If it does, well, we told you so. If it doesn’t, well, it just got scattered somewhere else. How convenient.


Then there are the more sophisticated weather reports of CNN, BBC and the other major news networks. Here we have an intelligent looking individual with a green screen behind them and a little clicker in their hand. They smile and show us a map of the world, usually starting with Europe, and little cloud animations all over the place. If they think its going to rain, they show an animation with water drops falling. If they think it’s going to be sunny, they show an animation of the sun shining. Seriously, are we in 4th grade?! We get it, you moron!


Sometimes they show us little diagrams with lines on them, supposedly depicting hot and cold fronts that give rise to wind currents and all that jazz. They show us how over the next few days the front will move in a north-westerly direction, thus giving rise to strong winds during Tuesday and Wednesday blowing from – err – this direction to that direction. OK, so I look at their map, then get up off my sofa, point myself north and say “Ah! Tomorrow the wind will blow from the left to the right. I must make note of this when I step outside, in case I accidently point my umbrella in the wrong direction and become the black Mary friggin’ Poppins.”

While I’m sure many ‘international business men’ out there are heavily dependant on the weather updates as they jet between Tokyo and Hawaii on ‘business’, I fail to see how the weather report can become such a fundamentally important part of the world news. Of course, I can understand if there’s going to be a tornado in Florida (again) then it should be newsworthy, but other than that I just don’t get how anyone would want to know what the temperature in Cairo is today. Except the people in Cairo, and I doubt that they’re going to tune into the BBC to get a weather update on Egypt.


As I finish this post, the birds have stopped chirping, the sky has turned grey and the first few drops of the impending shower fall on the leaves outside my window. By some miracle, the weatherman has been proved correct. You got lucky this time, O dealer of ambiguity, but mark my words; one day you shall be exposed for the charlatan that you are.

The Dark One has spoken!