A Chance Of Sunny Rain

     The shop was not busy, and the guy on the cash register was in a chatty frame of mind. The conversation turned to his college-bound son. He had urged the boy to become a weather forecaster, the guy joked, because they can get things wrong a lot and keep their jobs anyway.
     The guy really was joking, and not unkindly. He wasn't setting out to libel an entire profession. Just passing a wry comment on one of life's little quirks and ironies.
     And he did have a point, it seems to me.  In the morning, when I look out at the emerging day, I do with some regularity have occasion to imagine a chorus of weather forecasters chanting: Oops!
     We've all had the experience. The snow flurries that turn out to be a blizzard. The rainy day that turns out to be a sunny scorcher. At forecaster school they must talk a lot about learning to try, try again.
     And they must talk a lot about learning to talk a lot without actually saying any single thing very clearly. If I pause over the weather reports on television, I hear at length about isobars and fronts. The TV reports have never equipped me to understand them.  A front remains, to me, just a squiggly line with little semi-circles sticking out on one side and little triangles sticking out on the other.  An isobar is ... well, I forget.
     I do not hear clearly about the single question that interests me: Is it going to rain tomorrow?  When the forecasters finally get around to it, they shroud their answers in a kind of  statistical fog. They may say, for example, there is a 20 percent chance of rain. Does this mean a 20 percent chance over 100 percent of the area, or a 100 percent chance over 20 percent of the area? For years I have listened in vain for clarification.
     In the interest of fair play we should stipulate that a certain amount of this is not under the forecasters' control.  They are at the mercy of Mother Nature's whims, after all. And in these latter years they have become slaves to the masters of us all: Computers. Watch the weather forecasts long enough and you'll hear about computer models. In any given weather circumstance, you'll hear about several different computer models. Their diverging forecasts are intended to edify me about all the possibilities. I do understand that.  However I can't help fastening on one thought: The very best-case scenario is that all but one of them are wrong.
     Lay people can develop their own expertise in matters that especially interest them. I have a couple of friends who are football nuts. They are genuinely expert on the game. The same principle applies to those of us who follow weather forecasting. Years of watching it have equipped me to deliver my own weather report on most days.
     If the question is: Will it rain tomorrow?
     A good, serviceable forecast is: Maybe, maybe not.
     Thus my attention to the subject has become more in the nature of a humanitarian enterprise. I imagine a forecaster going home to a spouse who says, Well honey, how was your day?  I imagine having to answer that my day consisted of being made to look bad by forces beyond my control.
     Thus I am resolved: If I ever meet a forecaster face-to-face, I'm going to make it a point to be especially nice. I suspect they need hugs.