We have been snookered, hoodwinked, bamboozled and
beguiled.
We bought a “Rolex” watch from some guy on the street
corner. We believed we won millions in some foreign lottery. We gave money to the nice young man at the
front door who said he was supporting an orphanage. We bought mutual funds from
Bernie Madoff.
We hunkered down for a really wet winter.
We repaired the roof and replaced the gutters. We laid
in a supply of sandbags. We placed cisterns beneath the downspouts. We bought kayaks.
We grew lax about conserving water.
We were ready for a powerful El Nino, a “Godzilla”
weather event, which we were told would wash away all memories of our drought. There would be long showers and green lawns for everyone.
We’re still waiting, our eyes turned heavenward in
hopes that our blue skies will turn gray. But you know you’re in trouble when
forecasters start throwing around words like “miracle” when discussing the
chances of rain.
In the meantime, the weather remains drier than the
backyard bird bath.
It is in our nature to point the bony finger of blame when
things don’t go as planned.
So we take it out on weather forecasters who run a close
second to lawyers when it comes to tainted reputations.
Ask anyone. They'll tell you that we're relying on the word of a bunch an inept soothsayers who never look out the window to check conditions. Shame on us for believing them.
Except it’s a bad rap.
Sure, it’s easy to disparage many of our so-called TV weather experts who wouldn't know a dew point from a doughnut.
But the fact is that weather prediction has come a
long way since the 1920s, when, working by hand, English mathematician Lewis
Fry Richardson needed six weeks to come up with a six-hour forecast.
Thanks to computers, the amount of information on the
Earth’s climate at any given time is staggering.
Yet, even in skilled hands, predicting the weather remains an inexact science.
It is a complex phenomenon that depends on temperature, clouds,
precipitation, wind and pressure. For good measure, throw in ground and sea
temperatures, ocean currents as well as atmospheric pollution.
Mix it all together and come up with a forecast.
It sounds easy. It isn’t. Take it from Bill Patzert,
the esteemed climatologist at JPL in La Canada Flintridge. “You just have to stare at the data,” he said.
“Stare at it until your eyeballs are black and blue.”
Jim Yoe, chief administrator of the government’s Joint
Center for Satellite Data Assimilation, told Forbes magazine that he figures
the theoretical limit on accurate forecasting with today’s technology is on the
order of two weeks.
That means that seasonal data models are basically
crap shoots, as anyone knows who this year brought out the sunscreen and put
away the umbrella.
Patzert, the go-to guy on weather who gets more ink
that Donald Trump, was a leading voice in predicting an El Nino condition this
year.
Don’t knock it. He was right. El Niño is being blamed for drought
conditions in parts of the Philippines, Indonesia and Australia, as occurred in
1997-98.
Drought is also persistent in Central America. Water
levels are now so low in the waterways that make up the Panama Canal that
officials recently announced limits on traffic through the passageway that
links the Atlantic and Pacific oceans.
El Niño also influenced the heavy rainstorms that
effectively ended drought conditions in Colorado, Texas and Oklahoma, and has
brought floods and mudslides to Chile.
But it hasn’t made an appearance in Southern
California, thanks in large part to a high pressure ridge that deflected storms
away from us to the north.
If there’s an upside to this it’s that since we import
most of our water, it appears we’ll have a bigger supply to draw from.
Pazert remains optimistic that the rains may still
come. "As we look back, the big show is usually in February, March — even
into April and May," he said. "So, in many ways, this is on
schedule."
And if it isn’t? We had better consider that a real possibility and jump back on the water conservation bandwagon and do it now. If
we don’t, there could be hell to pay this summer.
Robert Rector is a veteran of 50 years in
print journalism. He has worked at the San Francisco Examiner, Los Angeles
Herald Examiner, Valley News, Los Angeles Times and Pasadena Star-News. His
columns can be found at Robert-Rector@Blogspot.Com.
Follow him on Twitter at @robertrector1.
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