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Howdy boys, I had to chime in on this since I just finished up four years of schooling to become a meteorologist. I know exactly what you all are talkin about. Right now I don't have a job but look forward to gettin one since I'm sick of the joke that is t.v. weathermen. If you do some research you'll find that most weathermen on t.v. have degrees in t.v. reporting and not weather forecasting. That's reason 1 not to trust them (do your research to know who to trust). Second, most forecasting places (that includes the national weather service) are forecasting for areas that are hundreds of square miles so they give a general forecast and not a detailed county by county forecast (no matter how much they try to make it look that way). The area thing is a big hangup I have with this job. If we could somehow get more forecaster positions opened so we could get a better area coverage we would have the type of accurate forecasts we need. You could get a guy who just covers a couple counties and can spend his time on them. Accuracy would probably double. There are probably 20 to 30 different maps to look at when doing a forecast and that is just for one hour, when you have forecasts produced by the models you hear about, which are set for every 3 hours that's 160-240 maps to look at in order to forecast for just one day. Make a seven day forecast and that puts you up to 1120-1680 maps to look at. So time is another issue to contend with. Now, the thing is most of your run of the mill t.v. guys don't look at that. I did a little investigative report in college at one of the local t.v. stations. I interviewed and observed their "chief" meteorologist. What a joke. He worked the 5,5:30, and 6pm news. He came in at 2-3pm (that's just 3hrs or so before news time) and didn't even start on the forecast right away. He finally did and just ripped it off the internet, spent most of his time doing graphics. I wrote a pretty harsh report on this guy. My teacher told me that if it got published I'd probably be sued for slander. Pretty good I thought, for just telling the truth. This guy even told me they play up snow just to scare old people. He laughed about it. Stuff like that is what makes me passionate about finding work as a forecaster. I grew up and still live on a farm. Add to that, I am farming right now while I look for work. I do my own forecasting and it got my corn out 2-3 weeks ahead of others, and got my hay in the barn with only a little rain on it (had to cut and bale it even with a little rain in my forecast because it was the only stretch of good days). So, I know exactly where you all are coming from. I know the problem and hope to change at least one station (if I can get a job). And rest assured, you won't see a stupid golf forecast on my watch. God bless. --old fashioned farmer
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