I am developing a deep rage against weather sites; not really (despite my whining) so much against the weather. Weather simply… is.
Getting annoyed with St. Louis for having shitty weather is like getting annoyed with a yippy dog for barking, or for a gumball tree for dropping trippy gumballs all over a sidewalk. St. Louis is simply being St. Louis; just like Nova Scotia is, I’m sure, currently doing its thing. And rain isn’t so bad. It’s kind of nice, actually, especially if you are in the mood.
The only thing that makes me insane re the weather is when I check a weather forecast, and it turns out to be crap, or is revised again and again throughout a perfectly ordinary (and I am told) entirely predictable day. Really, I suppose at the root I blame the individual (Bill) who continually tells me what the forecasts are. On my own I generally take life as it comes, like a dog would. I would never have looked out at this gloomy, dank day this morning and expected it to stop glooming at noon, had he not informed me that it would do just that. I would have accepted what I saw out the window. I might have given it a woof, or some side-eye, but I would have said to myself, “Another rainy day!” and gone about my rainy day sort of business. I would not have foolishly lurked around that window waiting for the sun to come out.
Part of the problem is surely where the information is coming from. Neither of us enjoy checking the forecast on the (truly outdated) NWS site, even though that is where the data originates, because the site doesn’t feel friendly. The HTML reminds me of 1994 (well maybe 1999, to be fair) and the sun is expressed as a cold blue/white star.
This upsets me more than I can credibly explain. If it is going to be fucking sunny, then I WANT TO SEE A FUCKING SUNNY SUN.
This is the NWS graphic for a sunny day. What a cold-looking and unsunny thing it is to me:
I have complained to a senior NWS forecaster about this cold, dull, unsunny sun graphic, and I pointed out that yellow sunny suns are sunnier, and the sunny sun graphic is the entire reason that Bill and I (who, all things being equal, and half of us being scientists, ought to be on the NWS site) will go to Weather.com instead, which is cheesy. Because they have a goddamned sunny sun, and their site code reflects the Modern Day. See the sunny sun:
The NWS forecaster, who is otherwise a reasonable person, was notably unsympathetic, pointing out that our sun is actually a star, which is not happy and friendly and yellow, but is in fact a blazing white/blue ball of flaming GAS. Like this:
And that there was no reason to pretend that we were all in kindergarten, and have this:
But the fact remains that perfectly smart people (as evinced by my dataset of three, which includes another (retired) senior forecaster for the NWS) prefer the graphic of the sunny sun over that of the (perhaps more realistic yet totally buzz-killing) cold white ball of flaming gas.
What do you think? Do you check forecasts? What site or app do you use? Do you find forecasts generally reliable for your area?
Do you give a rat’s ass what the picture of the sun looks like? Do you go to Weather.com just for their sunny yellow sun?
Visit the Beadmobile blog and keep up on the progress of our new book, Geometrics!
January 26th, 2012 at 2:17 pm
I only check weather sites when I am getting ready for a vacation and need to know what to pack, or when I am wanting to go to the Ren Faire but I am worried it might rain all day and get mud on my beautiful skirts. I am embarrassed to admit that I usually check my weather from the AOL homepage, even though I use AOL for almost nothing else anymore. They do in fact have a sunny yellow sun.
January 26th, 2012 at 2:26 pm
And how reliable do you find the AOL forecasts to be? I wonder how far they are from the original NWS data. Also, do you care at all about the sun looking “sunny?”
January 26th, 2012 at 2:54 pm
I find them marginally reliable. Sometimes they say it’s going to rain and we go to the Faire anyway and it doesn’t rain. Sometimes they say the weather in NY will be great next week and when I get there next week it RAINS THE ENTIRE TIME. But it always rains when I go to NY so I should just buy some dang galoshes.
I don’t particularly care what sort of graphic there is for the sun, though I do have to say that the yellow one looks more sun-like and the blue one looks like some sort of strange celestial phenomenon.
January 26th, 2012 at 2:31 pm
I always check the weather when I’m going to travel .. I usually go to accuweather.com. Don’t really care about the graphics as much as an accurate forecast of what I might encounter in places far enough away from me that I can’t just look out the window and judge for myself. Where I am in Northern New York, even an hour south can be dramatically different from what I’m experiencing at home.
January 26th, 2012 at 2:37 pm
When I first logged on to your site and saw “a cold white ball of flaming gas”…I thought you were gonna talk about Newt!
The weather forecasting for here is laughable. We rely on the tried and true method of looking out the window.
January 26th, 2012 at 2:52 pm
Our NWS forecasts are always way off, especially in regards to temperature. They never take our elevation into consideration. We have a local guy who does a great job and he has a sunny, yellow, cartoonish kind of sun on his website.
January 26th, 2012 at 2:58 pm
The comment about Newt was very funny, Anne!
I used to love the Weather Channel, but they have added so many tv shows that there is not too much weather. I love the sunny sun and the music behind the local forecasts. Now I usually get my weather from a NOAA weather channel that has radar and info all the time. I do use the Whether Channel ap on my android. It is pretty good and can tell me weather anywhere.
January 26th, 2012 at 3:09 pm
Hi Kate, being from St. Louis you may remember Ben Able who was a forecaster on the local NPR station for years. He found the 7-10 day forecasts that are so prevalent on weather stations to be quite laughable. I concur. Every time my husband says he wants to watch the weather to see the forecast, I say, why?
I do like to check radar. I am hyper vigilant because of doing outside shows where things have gotten very scary sometimes. I seem to do about as good as the local guys do on short term forecasts. I use MyRadarPro or WundMap or Radar Us. I like to be prepared but I don’t even mess with it if there is a sunny sun. I think the blue white sun may just mean that you are not in Florida and it is cold.
January 26th, 2012 at 3:23 pm
Thanks! Do you have an opinion on the colour of the sun graphic?
Also, I LOVED BEN ABLE!! (Even though admittedly we did use to say that he had never “ben able” to predict the St. Louis weather.
January 26th, 2012 at 3:25 pm
I don’t ever look at weather forecasts. And when something out of the ordinary is supposed to happen and the local weather people interrupt whatever is on the tv, I get annoyed. I’m sure that they get their jollies by forecasting extremes and love feeling important enough to interrupt whatever is playing. I don’t care what color the sun is or what the forecast is. Really. I just have enough cares and concerns in my life that I really don’t care!
January 26th, 2012 at 3:30 pm
To be clear, I love the Weather Service. They rock. They are different than TV weather, or AOL weather, or The Weather Channel.
I just don’t like the NWS Cold White Star.
January 26th, 2012 at 7:49 pm
I check NOAA.org if I’m traveling. Or if the dashboard thingy says snow and I’m supposed to go somewhere in the morning. Otherwise, the little dashboard thingy on my Mac, with the temp and the yellow sunny sun (or tiny wisps, or snow flakes) and the temp. are adequate for me.
January 26th, 2012 at 8:10 pm
And does the yellow sunny sun mean anything to you, or are you just as happy with the cold-looking white ball of gas?
January 26th, 2012 at 9:43 pm
definitely yellow sunny sun. Concept/symbol over realism.
January 26th, 2012 at 8:12 pm
Like you, I’ve become disillusioned with the weather forecasters. If I were wrong at work as often as they are, I’d be fired (with cause). But what really annoys me is that every weather event is a “Snowpocalypse”….even when it’s not. I just can’t take it. I’ll only check the weather online if I need to pack for something. And even then, I just check the average conditions for the month, and pack to layer. I’m just glad that I’m not one of those people that can predict the weather with my aching bones!
As far as the sunny sun or the cold white star….I suppose the sunny sun is cheerier, but I kind of like the more realistic feel of the cold white star.
t
January 26th, 2012 at 8:29 pm
Well, again, I differentiate between good NWS nerds and the kind of silly TV people who talk about Snowpocalypses. If only the NWS had a more accessible interface, maybe we wouldn’t all be on Yahoo and AOL and the Weather Channel. Part of why I wish they had Sunny suns.
Good for you as a scientist for liking the white ball of flaming gas, though.
January 27th, 2012 at 4:12 am
I get migraines, the only thing that is close to positive, is they are the best weather predictor! WGN has an APP which was wonderful until the last update.
It has happy little suns, and this week, the yellow road sign that shows “slippery sliding car on wet surfaces”, skid marks and all and gray hazy yucky days and pretty snow flakes. Two happy suns and crap for the rest of the week AND waiting for an update! There’s the Weather Channel APP, too. They all stink. I hate listening to the local weather, no matter what channel, because somehow ther all think there’s something funny no matter what the weather will be. We have snow, rain and falling temps tomorrow and my niece in Hawaii is cold when it’s in the 70′s…let’s face it, when the weather sucks, the pictures should match. Sunny yellow happy suns in Chicago in winter, duh!
January 27th, 2012 at 4:54 am
So if you get a sunny day in winter, you don’t want to see that goddamned happy yellow sun? What about in summer? Ah, summer, glorious summer…
January 28th, 2012 at 7:12 am
I wish I had beautiful blue windows to open so I could smell fresh air, flowers and the smell of newly cut grass. The sunny yellow sun…can bite me!
January 28th, 2012 at 12:05 pm
The blue windows are in St. Louis, and currently open on St. Louis, but I will soak up some sun and flowers for you so you feel better. No cut grass, though, I don’t go for that.
January 29th, 2012 at 4:04 am
I will take anything! We have enough GD landscrapers (no misspelling! with their loud blowers that totally drive you crazy…but when they leave, ahhh, heaven! The grass smells sweet, reminds me of Mobile, ungodly humidity, but unbelievable flowers. Spring fever was wonderful! No snow, but the smell of paper mills when the winds would blow in a certain direction, after a “rough” night, oh-oh! Thanks for the vision of the open blue windows…SPRING, please!
January 29th, 2012 at 9:19 am
I am sitting in bed, with Miss Fish, and every hair on her pretty little body is sparkling in the sunshine. The door is open, and the birds are chirping, and I am the happiest creature on Earth.
January 28th, 2012 at 4:44 pm
Well, for myself, I love suns, as evidenced by my escape from Colorado in 1994, followed by a wonderful life in southern sunny climes. But, I also would like the sunny forecast to be true. I think I should have become a weatherperson, because it’s the only job I can think of that you could screw up on a regular basis and remain employed year after year. Just remember, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.”