Today’s weather gurus use sophisticated computers to model all of the forecast possibilities as fronts push this way and that, pockets of high or low pressure skip hither and yon, and jet streams meander through the atmosphere, but the imprecise science of weather prediction still comes down to the interpretation of signs and wonders by humans who get it wrong on a regular basis.
Modern meteorologists say a seven-day forecast can accurately predict the weather about 80 percent of the time, and a fiveday forecast can do so about 90 percent of the time. A 10-day forecast is only right about half the time, and after that it’s pure guesswork.
I wrote the weather column for the Lafayette Advertiser for many years, and, without any meteorological training, probably matched those numbers. It seems that my guess was as good as anybody’s.
