Weather or not

The fickle finger of forecasters

By Jerry Fraser

Somewhere there is a textbook on weather that begins with this simple declarative sentence: “All weather is a result of the uneven heating of the earth’s surface.”

True enough, no doubt, but I wonder if this might be more to the point: “All weather is the occasion of endless drivel by the news media.”

Seldom do you see fishermen, pilots, farmers, and others for whom the weather is of critical importance — if not a matter of life and death — as animated about a potential snowstorm as your local weather personality is apt to be.

Jay Johnston, a crewman on the Point Judith, Rhode Island, dragger Heritage, shrugs when the subject of weather forecasts comes up. “Look out the window,” he says. “That’s the weather.”

His point is well taken. It’s bad enough that forecasters hype every piddly low pressure system halfway around the world into a “major snow event late next week.” What’s worse is that more often than not the advertised weather never materializes.

“Better safe than sorry,” forecasters will tell you. But how safe? And what of it if it does snow? On the morning of December 30 the Wells Shop ‘N’ Save parking lot overflowed with cars whose owners, flogged by Kevin Mannix and the rest of Portland’s vivacious weather personalities, were carting flashlight batteries and bottled water out of the place. You’d have thought everyone was going to a fallout shelter, not home to watch videos.

This is a disturbing trend for which computers are partly responsible. It used to be that forecasters lacked the graphics of a box of Morton’s salt and were lucky to get five minutes of air time. Now they get as much time as the local anchors, and they don’t have to do the pet segments. Modern software allows forecasters to jump to conclusions based on data that a few years ago they might have ignored — assuming they even had access to the information — and to animate these meteorological leaps of faith on your TV screen.

Even more responsible than computers, I think, are news managers, and not just those in television. Consider the aforementioned New Year’s Eve eve storm: not only did the Portland Press Herald lead its Sunday paper with the storm, it led the day before’s paper with the forecast. Granted, every newsroom has its weather nerd, but the top of page one two days in a row seems a bit of overkill for a storm that lasted less than 24 hours, dumped less than a foot of snow, and resulted in the cancellation of no New Year’s Eve parties I am aware of.

Don’t judge the Press Herald too harshly. I worked at the Boston Globe for the better part of five years, and we never missed a chance to sound the “buy dry goods” alarm. In fact, we did the Press Herald one better. Not only did we go nuts about storms, but in 1996 our television critic devoted two columns to evaluating storm coverage, culminating in a page-one feature on Boston’s “weather doyenne.”

Extra, extra; read all about it.

(It is worth noting that I commuted from Maine — 78 miles each way — during my time at the Globe and never missed a shift because of weather, and only once did I stay overnight in Boston.)

Newspeople aren’t the only ones given to overstate the weather. Many pilots would tell you that they’d never get off the ground if they waited for Flight Service weather specialists to tell them it was safe to fly.

When I was a commercial fisherman, I learned, by missing a lot of good days, that often the only way to learn what the weather was doing was to stick your nose out and see for yourself.

And that means not letting anyone see for you. Ken Young Sr., who fished out of Perkins Cove, could read the weather as well as anyone, and often bet against the weatherman and won. But he was by no means infallible.

One gusty northwest day I found myself fishing within a couple of miles of him outside Boon Island Ledge, about 20 miles offshore, and decided to give him a call on the radio. It was blowing hard enough that my deckhand and I had all we could do to dry the twine up to the boat, and I was getting anxious. “What do you think?” I asked.

“Dying out right here,” was his reply.

Well there, I thought, it must be so, and I set out again. But when I glanced his way 15 minutes or so later I saw his trawl doors nested in the gallows and his net wrapped snugly around the drum. The Ugly Anne had a bone in her teeth and the Old Man, as Young was known, was headed home.

The winch on my boat, the appropriately named Hard Times, was vastly underpowered, and we depended on a Dodge truck transmission shifted into low gear to give it some oomph. The oomph, however, came at the expense of speed, and by the time we had the gear aboard, the ocean was feather white. We jogged several miles at half speed or less to keep her from flying off the tops of the waves and by and by arrived at the wharf.

“Breezy, ain’t it?” the Old Man said with twinkle in his eye.

I nodded.

Years ago Channel 13 had a weatherman by the name of Bob O’Wrill. Known as O’Wrong among fishermen, he reportedly was attacked by two gillnetters one night as he left the studio. Apparently they’d put their faith in his promise of light and variable winds and wound up scaring themselves half to death.

Some guys never learn.

Jerry Fraser can be reached at cfraser@maine.rr.com.