September 1, 2014
Category Archives: Saint Louis
August 21, 2014
Twilight Thunderstorm Arrival
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May 18, 2013
An Open Letter to Saint Louis Meteorologists
Photo courtesy of xlurbanmedia.com
I’ve been watching St Louis meteorologists for years. Rarely do I watch one of their news segments without getting verbally agitated by some of their glib, insensitive nonsense. I’ve compiled a list of the biggest complaints I have. If anyone, particularly our esteemed weather watchers, would like to comment, please do and I’ll give you top-billing.
1) What the hell is a normal temperature? In my lifetime, I’ve seen routine snows in Missouri to almost none at all. I’ve seen summers that didn’t start until late June to summers with temperatures that could melt your face off. To be glib, the earth was once covered in lava, and on the side of the coin, ice. (So much for temperature averages). We routinely see magnetic reversal of the poles, and I fully expect Mother Earth to adapt with hotter summers or colder winters, or vice-versa, depending on where you live in the world. I might point out that there hasn’t been a normal temperature since 19-freaking-70. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/02/21/us-temperature-trends_n_2735036.html So why do you guys labor us with this normal weather crap? Speaking of…
2) If it’s not 70 degrees in St Louis, the weather is crap. We’re told this over and over again. Do you guys know or have any idea how unbelievably depressing this is? I happen to love summer. Humidity, bring it on. That means a car ride with the windows down, fan in the window, driving to the country to look at the stars at night and if it gets too hot, swim in the pool or go to the lake or the river. But if I turn on the news to see if it’s going to rain, you know what I hear? Over and over and over and over again, all summer long, this: “Tune in when Keith Goodhair gives his forecast to find out when we’re finally going to get a break from all this heat”. O-M-G! I just want to drive to the studio and strangle someone. Same thing with the fall. We had a massive drought over the summer and we never heard the end of how hot it was and how badly we needed rain. We finally got some moisture in the early fall, 3 days straight of rain, were you guys happy?…no. Someone said: “Looks like Thursday will be the day all this rain finally moves out of the area and we get a beautiful day of 73″. You guys are never happy. Ever. Do you know that a bad mood is infectious? And it seems the only time I ever hear anything positive from St Louis meteorologists is if we’re somehow in that magic number of 70 degrees. It sucks.
July 3, 2012
Record Temperatures in St Louis
It’s still hot in Saint Louis. Ever try living in a Ziploc bag with a heat lamp over your head? Yeah, still hotter.
Crutch of the St Louis Meteorologist
Speaking of the weather, when I want to find out just how hot it is outside, I turn to the St Louis NewsTeam. As I mentioned the other day, St Louis meteorologists always seem surprised it’s hot and as a result, they constantly lean on this thing called the bar graph. The bar graph is seemingly harmless: it shows you at a glance the forecast and 7 days worth of high and low temperatures. No problem. No problem until they start talking about “normal temperatures”.
“Normal temperatures” are how today’s high or low temperature stacks up against the average of every temperature in recorded history. But let’s go back. You step outside and the temperature is whatever it is. You think of it in terms of right now; consequently, you accept the weather, you enjoy being outside, and you move on with your day. But now here’s Mark Nicehair with the ST Louis NewsTeam telling you something like today is “unseasonably cold” or how today “isn’t the peak day of the week.”
Imagine if an insurance guy got on TV and said, “according to our actuarial tables, your mortality rate is normal this week, except for, and let’s look at our bar graph here — you can see Thursday is where your biggest chance of dying will occur, so be extra careful crossing that street or getting into that car”.
Depressing isn’t it?
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