Maryland's Classical Music Station

Talking about weather…

We’ve had an unusually mild winter, and I don’t think too many people are complaining.  Oh, every so often I hear someone say, “I really wish we had gotten a nice big snowfall.”  Obviously someone who has never had to replace gutters brought down by heavy snow.

I enjoy watching the local television weather forecasters.  You can see their excitement build when it looks like the weather is going to be particularly severe, and conversely, you can also see the disappointment when their prognostications are wrong.  What a great job–you can be wrong half the time and not get fired.  It’s just a good thing that heart surgeons and air traffic controllers don’t get the same margin of error.  I can’t help but rank meteorology up there with astrology in the hierarchy of exact sciences.  Not that I have anything against astrology.  I do find it amusing that so many people I know read the horoscope in the paper every day, and then tell me they don’t believe it.  A couple of years ago, I read a horoscope for Pisces (my sign, by the way) which said, “an inauspicious time to start a new romantic relationship.” At that time, I had been married to my wife (still married, by the way) for 30 years.  Boy, that horoscope really nailed it.

Hey, I’m not scoffing.  If it works for you, that’s fine by me.  The way I see it, there are a lot of mysteries in the universe, and just because you can’t prove or disprove something, or just because you don’t truly understand it, doesn’t mean it isn’t real or possible.  Maybe some day we will solve the mystery of some of these things, like weather forecasting.