by Ken Root
The drought in California has placed meteorologists in the spotlight and made the El Nino weather pattern very important news. I know of no other profession where we applaud a success rate of fifty percent and soon forget the shortcomings of the forecasters. I base this on my observation that accuracy of a weather forecast decreases as time increases. Watch TV or check your phone and you will see predictions for today?s weather and for what?s coming at the end of the week. Track it and you will find that forecasts for sunshine, rain, wind and temperature will often change dramatically by the time the event arrives. Predicting long range weather is not science, it is a scam. Still we wait for the next long range forecast like it is prophecy of the second coming.
I like meteorologists. Some are good friends of mine. Their cheery smiles on TV and peppy forecasts on radio please all but their ex-wives who tired of forecasts of marital bliss that didn?t come to pass. When giving the National Weather Service forecast for the next three days, they do an excellent job but when they begin to project into the next month or further, it becomes a form of psychiatric derailment.
We all have a desire to find simple answers to complex questions. When you ask a mechanic why your car stopped running, he will tell you it?s the ethanol. El Nino is the simple answer meteorologists give us when there is a drought or too much rain. Have you ever considered how ludicrous it is to state that weather around the world is defined by a change in the temperature of sea water in the Central Pacific Ocean? Establishing an oscillation in the southern hemisphere is fine to do but can it be directly connected to a specific weather event six thousand miles away?
Take any place on earth and observe it for a century. In that time frame there will be a wide range of weather with certain patterns that repeat themselves based on surrounding terrain and seasonality. The most profound statement I?ve heard from a climatologist is: ?I don?t predict anything that hasn?t already happened.? This eloquent man has spent his long career in thoughtful examination of weather. He loves statistics and strings together some fascinating visual presentations that show what happened in great detail. Then he begins to move into the future and does an excellent job of keeping the entertainment going as he steps close to the edge on climate change and then gets really abstract about how much the weather will become unruly over the next twenty years. He predicts the worst weather long after he will retire and have no accountability for its occurrence. Brilliant!
I was once a young and naive farm broadcaster and loved to hang around the weather office at WKY-TV in Oklahoma City. On one occasion, the meteorologists were watching a hurricane off the Texas coast. Later that day I set out driving with my wise and elder mentor, Russell Pierson. As we loped across the state in Ford LTD, I would explain the cloud formations to him and their relationship to what was going on a thousand miles away. He listened for a while and then said: ?If you hadn?t heard those predictions or seen the satellite images, this would mean nothing to you and you?d just go on with your life, come what may!? Cavemen, Native Americans and Pioneers of the Plains just kept right on going with literally no understanding of science but keen awareness of seasons and cycles that allowed them to survive the worst and prosper in the best.
The drought in the Western United States has been long and moisture in the form of rain or snow would be more than welcome. Each time the area dries up, agriculture gets hit a little harder. The original settlers realized that California was an arid land. They knew winter moisture came from time to time and the mountains collected large amounts of snow that melted and ran into the valleys each spring. In the late nineteenth century, farmer led organizations built dams to catch the snowmelt and release it into irrigation canals to produce abundant crops. But California filled up with people and the cities have overpowered agricultural interests. When a drought comes today, the fields set fallow while the water goes to thirsty residents downstream.
We need California fruit and vegetable crops all across the country. The quality and safety of this domestic production is higher than imports. But farmers in all irrigated regions of the west have to produce more with less.
Weather forecasters in the region know rain is sporadic and extreme. The seasons, they say, are flood, drought, fire and earthquake. If this El Nino gives a normal response, there will be storms that dump heavy rain on the coast and valleys while putting a lot of snowpack in the mountains. The wait has been long and circumstances are dire but when the moisture comes, where it falls and how much accumulates, are all very much in question.
Fearing I will be struck by lightning for my criticism of prognostication, I want to be clear that I value meteorology most because of warnings given in advance of tornadoes and hurricanes. Once you realize that weather events can kill you and your family, severe weather is taken seriously. We are not as observant as our ancestors and meteorologists have amazing tools to see storms and predict hot spots.
I just wish we would stop asking meteorologists when rain will come or how cold the winter will be. Like economists, they feel obligated to answer with some contrived calculation. We accept the forecast as fact when it is fantasy. Then we are all disappointed. El Zero all over again.
