Variable weather: "When can we expect 100% accurate forecasts?"

Just in case you were wondering. I've returned to looking out the window -- and there's probably an app for that.

Why are all my weather apps different? by Nic Fleming (The Guardian)

It was a tale of two storms. The first consisted of the rain and thunder forecast for Bournemouth by the BBC weather app on the Saturday spring bank holiday. The second came when the first failed to materialise and a tourism manager in the town complained that visitors who stayed away could have come after all and enjoyed sunshine and blue skies.

This opportunity to rage at inaccurate forecasting, bash the BBC and highlight the grievances of small businesses did not go to waste. For the Sun, it was a “blunderstorm”. The Mail gave voice to furious social media users whose weekend had been ruined by “crap forecasting” and “total incompetence”. The Spectator even managed to use the row to take pot shots at climate-change predictions.

So, just another non-storm in a media teacup? Perhaps, yet the story highlights important questions about how technology is transforming both weather forecasting and our relationship with it. Is our ability to predict temperature, precipitation and wind speed improving? If so, how come forecasts can vary so widely depending on which smartphone apps we use? How long have human meteorologists got before supercomputers and artificial intelligence make them redundant? And when can we expect 100% accurate forecasts?

Please, sir, might you consider ... shoveling ...

... your effing walk.

Therein lies a rant. Of course, shoveling snow isn't a consideration this morning, although I'm so impossibly old that I can remember being warned four days ago to expect eight inches of it, followed by the Killer Kold, presumably preceded by flash floods and the stray winter locust infestation.

Think of all the jobs on the planet, and consider how often weather forecasters are wrong as they fear-monger for fun and profit. Consider how long you'd last in your job with the same abysmal rate of failure. The weather forecasting profession has long since digressed into realm of late night television sketch comedy; you know, when the weatherman calls the supermarket and says "line up the milk and bread, boys -- I'm gonna spin the wheel and scare the bejesus out of the morons tonight. Just send my commission check to the same Swiss bank account."

Shakespeare's oft-quoted line, ''The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers" turns out to have been inaccurate. There were no weather forecasters in the playwright's time. He couldn't possibly have known to get it right.

Shovel Your Fucking Walk, by John Cook (Gawker)

Good morning. Is there snow on the sidewalk in front of your residence or place of business right now? Shovel it.

Oh, I'm sorry—you don't own your apartment? You just rent, from a landlord, whom you believe to be responsible for shoveling the walk? Good point. Has he shoveled it yet? No? OK, then shovel your fucking walk. You're right, he should totally have shoveled it. But he didn't. So now you have to.