🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <181262@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov> pdb059@ipl.jpl.nasa.gov (Paul Bartholomew) writes:
>In article <lr6k4iw@Unify.Com>, ceb@dbrus.Unify.Com (Caroline E. Bryan) writes:
>> In article <3636@cod.NOSC.MIL> price@cod.NOSC.MIL (James N. Price) writes:
>>>>
>>>I lived on the E. Coast for a year a while back.  It seemed that
>>>when their weather folks said "70% chance of rain" it meant "it
>>>will be raining 70% of the time."  It seems here in good ol' S.
>>>Calif. that the only time rain can be correctly predicted if it's
>>>raining right now!
>> 
>> In the DC metro area, where I lived for 20 years, when they say "70% chance
>> of rain" they mean it will 100% definitely rain over about 70% of the area.
>
>I'm sorry, but neither of these interpretations is correct.  When weather
>forecasters say that there is a 70% chance of rain, they mean that under
>these same weather conditions in the past, 70% of the time it rained--i.e.,
>out of the last 100 days that we had equivalent temperature, pressure, cloud
>cover, fronts, etc., it rained 70 of those days.

This guy from JPL, in Pasadena, CA, tells us what DC metro weather people
mean when they use percentages in rain?  How does *he* know?  I posted the
above because that's the explanation the DC metro weather people gave *me*
(and the rest of the local population) once a year, every year, for 20 years.
DC is not Pasadena, thank God, and the ability to forecast DC weather is much
better than the ability to forecast Pasadena weather.  What Bartholomew says
makes sense in a theoretical way, and -- who knows? -- maybe the weather
people in Pasadena actually use percentages in the way he describes, but I
*am* correct about how the weather people in the DC area use rain percent-
ages, and for all I know Mr. Price may be correct, too.

You'd think that a reader of a.f.u. would not automatically extrapolate
theory to reality without pausing for a moment to wonder if maybe something
else might possibly be going on outside his/her own narrow experience.


Carrie "now tell me how my mother -- not *your* mother -- makes spaghetti 
	sauce" Bryan	ceb@dbrus.unify.com	x6244		--------------+
|    For every vision there is an equal and opposite revision.   -- Anon.     |
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