Weather whistle blower
The inventor of the percentage system of predicting the weathermust have had a sense of humor because his or her system of telling us whether or not it will rain by giving us a percentage is a joke. The percentage tells us that when weather experts look at the weather conditions they look at past experiences to see whether it rained in the past when these conditions existed. A “prediction” of thirty percent, for example, means that in three cases out of ten when these conditions existed in the past it rained. A “prediction” of fifty percent, which we understand is a way of saying there is a very good chance it will rain, actually only means that in the past, under these conditions, it rained half the time. Thus there is a fifty-fifty chance it will rain. This “prediction” is as good as flipping a coin when there is a fifty-fifty chance it will turn up heads. It is no surprise that the forecasters are wrong in over half of their predictions.
