The Weather Girl

We all like to know what the weather’s doing. And there are a variety of methods to decipher, describe, monitor and predict weather patterns and many dedicated weather boffins are out there risking life, limb and reputation just to bring us our 'Seasonal Climate Outlooks'.

But few of us everyday, meteorologically-challenged types ever wonder about what they actually do, these Meteogram junkies, or how the heck they come up with their predictions.

For example, who has ever heard of the 'MJO' (Madden-Julian Oscillation)? Apparently this is not some crazy Anglo-Greco dance, as I first suspected, but a periodic increase in rainfall which moves regularly across the tropics. Some guy (presumably in a tree-house somewhere in the Daintree Forest) checks satellite cloud loops and atmospheric pressure changes to predict bursts in monsoon activity during the wet season.

And you, at home, just go, “Ho hum, another wet week ahead”.

Well, that’s if you happen to live in the tropics.

Not around here though. We haven’t had a wet week for so long that the old saying; “Face like a Wet Week” had been changed to “Face like a Dry Winter”; that’s how bad it is! But I digress.

The real reason I wanted to write about all things meteorological this week, is that I may have accidentally uncovered a fool-proof method of predicting rain.

No, I haven’t been consulting the ‘Koppens Classification of Climates System’; nor have I been checking the ‘Rainfall Variability Index’ (although I do admit to having a peek at my Aneroid Barometer which has been pointing — somewhat optimistically, I would say — to RAIN for the past two years. I threw it out).

I haven’t even been consulting my aching sciatic nerve or arthritic tennis elbow and I certainly wasn’t listening to those cheeky ‘rain birds’ who have been squawking madly for weeks. I will admit the ants in the sugar bowl had me momentarily convinced but, like the promising clouds that have been gathering regularly for the past few months, I eventually ignored their teasing antics and went in search of a more reliable method of forecasting some long-desired precipitation.

And found it.

Via my house renovation.

Well, more specifically, the fitting of a new roof and its inherit necessity to remove the old roof, thus exposing the upper reaches of my abode to the heavens (and all that falls therefrom).

You guessed it. The one day of the millennia when I could really have used a bit of dry weather, and the skies open up!

Of course, I predicted this … with unwelcome accuracy.

And not only did it pour but, in an effort to check if the tarps were holding up, my intrepid spouse climbed up to check out the potential damage and went soaring from the slippery rooftop. He landed with a sickening thud, face down on the front lawn. (I did accurately predict this too, I might add, although, “I told you so’s” are not much appreciated by injured — although miraculously, alive — roof-skaters).

So from now on, dear reader, I will not be relying on weather men and their little formulas; their radars and isobars and satellites and gigabytes and frosty-bytes or whatever it is they claim gives them the forecasting edge.

Instead, I will check the local Council building permits and see whose doing a little roof-raising … and when. And if the renovators are as unlucky as us?

Well, we’ll all be jumping for joy ….. (while they get out the buckets!)