Isn't Meteorology supposed to be a SCIENCE?

I thought meteorology was supposed to be the SCIENCE of weather forcasting. In Boston, it seems to be a little bit of hocus pocus with a cool digital map thrown in for the viewing public. The thing that kills me is that even though the forcasters in Boston have it wrong a neat 100% of the time, I still tune in to watch them daily.

Yesterday, in the morning when I woke up, the forcasters were predicting 4-8 inches of snow on the ground by this morning (Tuesday.) The snow was supposed to have started yesterday afternoon and continue all throughout today. It was actually supposed to be at its worst right about now (early Tuesday morning.)

As the day wore on, the forcasters kept giving the snow a later start time, and the 4-8 inches turned into 3-6 inches. However, they all held firm that the bulk of the snow would be on the ground early Tuesday morning.

But alas...I wake up today, Tuesday morning, and other than a little rain and some strong wind THERE IS NOT ONE FLAKE OF SNOW TO BE SEEN. I know it is stupid, but sometimes, when these jerks predict snow, I start to get all psyched thinking there might be a snow day. Then I wake up, and its freakin' beach weather. Where the hell did these people earn their meteorology degrees?

My brother-in-law told me, last night, that he heard a weather guy say, "We are guaranteed to get a direct hit...unless of course the snow turns south, in which case, we won't get anything. We are also guaranteed to get a mix of rain, and 3-6 inches of snow....unless it turns into an all-snow event, in which case we'll have over a foot of snow."

Please, sign me up for this job. Where else could you make 7 figures a year and have absolutely no obligation to be accurate or truthful?

Anyway, I'm pissed to have school today for two reasons...

1. I had every one of my 60 students hand in an essay before the vacation. I know, I know..I should have tackled the task of correcting them at the beginning of the vacation, but come on...First the holidays, then a little R + R. I'd get to them eventually, right? Actually, over the past two days, I have been correcting them and they are, on average, so bad, that each one takes an agonizing half hour to correct. One student wrote 5 pages, front and back, in the messiest, lightest pencil you can imagine. I wrote so many comments and corrections, you can barely see anything she wrote anymore. That one took a whopping 75 minutes to correct. I still have 10 left to correct. I'll try to get some done in the classroom when I arrive early today.

2. The superintendent didn't close school the last time we had a similar storm. The forcasters are now saying that the snow will continue to fall all day long, ending up this afternoon with up to 6 inches. The last time, the blizzard hit fever pitch at 2:30, the exact school release time. Kids ended up not even getting picked up by busses until as late as 4:30. The busses then could not get kids home because somerville is hilly and the busses could not even get up or down the hills. Some kids ended up on busses until 7:30 that night! Another fun dismissal!

Anyway, all, peace out!