Making It Up As They Go

For the past two days Massachusetts had been warned that a storm was a-comin'. It wasn't going to be bad, you see, just 5 or 6 inches and therefore no one around here seemed particularly concerned about it. We hadn't had snow in a couple of weeks and the time away from our shovels had served as a nice opportunity for people to recharge their winter batteries. Plus, we had just come off a week of temperatures in the mid-50s and bright sun so there had been a lot of melting, which meant we finally had a place to put any additional snow. Not to mention, this storm was even coming on a holiday so it wouldn't mess up too many people's commutes. Therefore, while none of us were happy at the thought of snow re-covering our finally-back-to-pavement driveways, it was about as good a scenario as we could get. But then I awoke this morning to find it could actually get better. There was only an inch of snow on my driveway and the sun was fighting to get through the clouds. I thought maybe the big snow was coming later in the day, but it's not - we missed it. We basically got enough to cover all the dirty snow in a fresh coating of white and that's about it. As I type this most of the snow on pavement has melted away, my driveway is simply wet and I didn't even have to lace up my boots.

The funny thing about this was that while no one was mad the weathermen were wrong, they still felt the need to spend the morning trying to cover their collective asses; talking about shifting winds late at night and warm fronts coming out of nowhere. Frankly, it sounds like they are just throwing out any excuse they could think of. It reminded me of a story from Johnny Most's memoir about a colleague who was calling a football game on radio (even before TV) in which the team had two stud running backs, one wearing #32 and the other wearing #33. Late in the game one of them broke through for a long run and the announcer couldn't see the number, so he guessed it was number #33. About thirty yards later he finally saw that it was actually #32. Rather than apologize and just admit to the listening audience he couldn't see the number at the start of the run, but knowing anyone checking the boxscore later would see the other guy's name, the announcer told the people listening that #33 stopped and lateraled the ball to #32, who then took it in for the touchdown. Even though it wouldn't have really matter which player scored the announcer still felt a need to cover his ass with a made-up story. (This is also why drinking is no longer allowed in press boxes.)

Since radio-only sports broadcasts are officially dead, it got me to thinking about how weathermen are one of the few professions in which people can make up excuses after the fact that the rest of us aren't in a position to question. I certainly don't know enough about weather patterns to question what they say and shifting winds sound real enough to me. In fact, I think the only people who can get away with this besides weathermen are science fiction writers. Think about it: you point out a huge hole in their story's plot and they can just make something out of thin air to fill that hole and, because they are writing about a make-believe world, it doesn't even have to make sense:

"So at the end of your story the main characters are surrounded by lava? How are they getting home?"
"Uh... Eagles? Yeah. Giant, plane-sized eagles are gonna come by and pick them up."
"Alright, sounds a little bizarre to me. But I guess it's just as plausible as winds shifting overnight and a warm front coming out of nowhere."