Flake out, already!

Well, we got some snow but nothing to get too excited about.

When I was in New England, every year right before the first measurable snowfall hit, the local news stations would go insane --constant coverage of the upcoming winter storm, always advertised as maybe the storm of the century with ominous pictures of previous such storms of the century. (So, tell me, exactly how many storms of the century can any one century have?)

They got away with this because, as you have probably noticed, weather forecasting -- for all the doppler this and lazer-team that -- is a far from exact science. And those handy percentages always provide some wiggle room. A 90% chance of disastrous flooding is, after all, not a 100% chance. They didn't exactly promise it would flood (or blizzard or whatever), did they?

This provides a handy way out when the dreaded storm (as it almost always does) turns out not to be such a big deal. Then the people that networks pay somewhat big bucks to tell us what is going to happen, get to earn their somewhat big bucks telling us why it didn't happen. [In this they strongly resemble political pundits, but we won't go there.]

I guess it didn't happen because they were wrong.

Now I am very grateful that they are much better at these things than anyone could be a few decades back. Especially when we are into tornado-type events in the neighborhood, I really like seeing exactly where that dark and dangerous red spot is on the map. So I want to give credit where credit is due.

But when they say up to eight inches and it is like maybe one? C'mon, guys!