Observing the weather
I believe in weather forecasts. I have for most of my life. Once we stop turning to the farmers Almanac which would assure us that we were going to have snowy weather for three months the year we wanted something more precise. The government believed in our needs and provided regular weather forecasting. Hence my sense of disbelief that our neighbours to the South are getting set to dismantle their part of the weather forecasting service. I guess that if you do not deliver bad news then there is no bad news. Science for the rest of the world. Yes we have people that watch the weather all over the continent and they take the time to provide what they see to a network. This works for the main part because we have weather observation stations that are kept in good states of repair. Not pointing fingers at our local wind observation station which seems to be offline for months at a time. That is just a flaw. And my own weather observation station does a good job even if I do not manage to keep the contact with the world network online all the time. I am lazy. The equipment works just fine but the flaw is me. So back to weather observations. This is a true science based on observation and collection of data. With enough data points you can get a supercomputer to predict what the weather will be over the next couple of days. And then you can tell the world about it. When I listen to the weather forecast on local TV I rely upon the scientific foundations of that exercise. And the supercomputer summers in upper Canada. I can only wonder what they’re going to do down South when the forecasting of significant weather is no longer there. I’m sorry but looking out the window will not let you know that there is a tornado inbound. Which reminds me that I really should try and get my own weather station back online if only to provide data points to a much larger network.
