I try to miss weather reports whenever I can, but in the United States, and particularly in Nashville, that is impossible. With most local newscasts consisting of twenty-two minutes of actual broadcast time, about 15 of them seem to be given over to the smiling, drippy, it’s-32-degrees-but-the-wind-chill-factor-makes-it-feel-like-the-temperature-of- liquid-oxygen meteorologist. That leaves seven or so minutes for the news starved public to learn everything of consequence that has occurred that day in the rest of the cosmos.
One local station has a one hour news broadcast, with 44 minutes of air time, so their merry band of meteorologists do about thirty-five minutes every night. Add ten minutes if there is even a hint of a storm east of Oklahoma City.
In winter months, the star of this weather team is a stuffed penguin that wears earmuffs and a neck scarf and warns us nightly throughout the mild Nashville winters, of possible school-closing flurries. So popular is this stuffed penguin that he has become the spokesbird for several local advertisers. Only in America.
I’m told by a friend who travels frequently to the old country that in England televised weather reports last only moments, as in, “It’s quite cold presently. In the morning it will still be cold, and rather rainy; and now, back to the news. This is, after all, a newscast.”
Another local station brags of having the first weather report, lest your neighbors learn there’s a twenty-percent chance of rain before you do. The first weather report comes early in the broadcast, between coverage of the latest bailout and the story of the cat that nursed the orphaned baby possum; film at ten. But first, the weather...
And what a report it is. We are given the temperature, the record high and low temperatures for that day throughout recorded history, how today’s temperature compares to the average, tonight’s predicted low, expected temperature at sunrise tomorrow, tomorrow’s predicted high, wind velocity and direction, wind chill factor, (or heat index reading) barometric pressure, relative humidity, precipitation for the past 24 hours, total precipitation month to date and year to date, average precipitation for this month in Nashville since 1492, where we stand now, precipitatively, relative to every other month since the advent of the Gregorian calendar, and the seven day forecast, accurate until the end of the broadcast.
Then we’re told the pollen count, spore and mold levels, air pollution level, current phase of the moon, weather “requests” for cities Nashvillians might be visiting, water levels of area lakes, the average depth of the Cumberland River, an explanation of what the live active cultures in yogurt actually do, and the real reason why the glove didn’t fit.
There is sometimes mention of ground fog. Not just any fog, but ground fog. You’re probably asking yourself, “Say, isn’t that something like ground beef?” The answer is, “No.” Ground fog is merely fog that is close to the ground, just like all the fog that we've ever seen. If it weren’t close the ground, it would be a cloud. A sky cloud.
Television meteorologists are fond of pitting their station’s brand of radar technology against that of rival stations. There is no meaningful difference. All of the radar pictures are colorful, and thanks to High Definition, they are in incredibly sharp focus. Rain appears as yellow, green, blue and red splotches on the map. Red is the one to avoid, because it won’t wash out.
Among the more captivating weather reporting technologies are little palm-size devices, which, in the hands of a trained, knowledgeable meteorologist will make appear on the map gold radiating suns, gray storm clouds with rain lines slanting out of them, and splendid blue highs and red lows that cover several states. We sink further into our Lazy Boys, staring at the HD regional map with its cutting edge storm indicators, now with 3-D cloud formations that wash across our state again and again and again, ad nauseam, up from the Gulf.
We should count our blessings. No one in the world knows more weather details with less certainty than Americans.