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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