Wednesday, January 25, 2006

If a train full of meteorologists is travelling west...

This morning the radio weather guy said forecasts called for a high today of 30 degrees. Then he said the current temperature was 36 degrees. Unclear on which kind of math he was using, I called the radio station. Here is a partial transcript of our conversation.

Radio Guy: "Hello."

Me: "The weather guy just said that the forecast calls for a high today of 30 degrees but then he said the current temp is 36 degrees. How does that work?"

RG: "Well you see, its supposed to get cooler today so the temperature will be going down."

Me: "I understand that, but if the temp will be 30 later and its 36 now isn't that the high?"

RG: "That's not really how it works. (Pause) Its kind of hard to explain..."

Me: "OK, So maybe meteorologists use a different kind of math than the rest of us to compute highs and lows but, if its 36 now and the temp is going down, doesn't that mean the high is 36?"

RG: "Well, I guess so."


Unfortunately, I wasn't in my car long enough to hear his next report.

1 comment:

-John Lustig said...

Maybe these radio weather people are really out of work Enron accountants.