Groveling is seldom pretty, especially on the 10 o’clock news.
But there was WFAA/Channel 8’s Pete Delkus on Thursday, endeavoring to explain what happened to those Whataburger-sized hail stones that he and the other meteorologists in town had emphatically predicted.
Delkus’ alibi involved weather balloons and release times and unstable caps, and I swear I could hear Dale Hansen guffawing in the background.
Flights were canceled. Schools were closed. Restaurants shut their kitchens early and ordered employees to seek shelter. It’s probably safe to say that tens of millions of dollars in local commerce were lost, all because the TV men and women whose sole job is to forecast our weather had a bad day or two at work.
“We blew it,” KDFW/Channel 4’s Evan Andrews said on Twitter, “and we do apologize.”
Hey, it happens. Are we dare going to complain about not getting hail and damaging winds?
Believe me, I know how difficult it is to make predictions. I make 12 months of them every New Year’s Day, and I don’t have any weather balloons or high-resolution computer models to help me. Most of my sports predictions, granted, end up being a tad off, but at least we haven’t had any hail damage. Yet.
The whole weather thing Wednesday reminded me of the time in December, 2000, when I tried to give newspaper readers some earnest insight into the coming weekend’s NFL playoff games. I needed help. I needed expert analysis.
So, as I show below, I called a partly cloudy array of local TV meteorologists and asked them to help me predict the games.
Everyone got the joke . . . except the weather people, who proceeded to take the task very seriously.
Here’s what I wrote:
My weekend forecast for the NFL playoffs: confused. With a 99 percent chance of consternation.
There are no sure bets on this first week of the pro football postseason. Not for me, at least.
Indianapolis at Miami. Denver at Baltimore. Tampa Bay at Philadelphia. On three of the four NFL wild-card round contests, the Las Vegas point spread stands at three points or less, and the fourth — the St. Louis Rams at New Orleans — may be the weekend’s closest game of all.
I need help. I need an expert opinion. I need a panel of professionals whose every prognostication exudes authority and daily conviction.
So I called our local TV weathermen — and weatherwoman. I mean, if you can’t trust your TV meteorologist, who can you trust? But forget I said that.
Let me preface this narrative by saying that every one of the meteorologists that I spoke with disarmed me with their charm and cordiality.
I did, however, decline to mention the two inches of snow that failed to fall on our half of the forecast Wednesday night. Nor did I bring up the mid-December day when schools closed in anticipation of a forecast ice-fest, yet by 10 a.m. we were all walking the mall in shirtsleeves.
Hey, stupid, answered Rebecca Miller of KXAS-Channel 5. “It did snow,” she said, correcting me. “Four to six inches from Midlothian to Granbury to Weatherford to Eastland . . . all part of the Metroplex!
“Which channel were you watching, anyway?!?”
OK. She got me. While the night produced nary a snowflake in northeast Tarrant County, as much as six inches fell in places such as Cedar Hill, where the snow was so thick and slippery that KDFW/Channel 4’s Ron Jackson had to park his car at the bottom of the hill and walk home.
(Insert vengeful snarks here).
But I digress. I needed these trained professionals’ help.
The dean of local meteorologists, Troy Dungan of WFAA/Channel 8, is calling for “a 70 percent chance” that the defending champion Rams will throttle the Saints today in New Orleans.
Neal Barton of KTVT/Channel 11, on the other hand, has been to the Louisiana Superdome, and he sees the outcome differently.
“It’s the only stadium in the country, I think, that sells not only beer but hard liquor,” Barton observed. “So I predict that those big, fat, 330-pound, corn-fed Midwest boys will be heaving and crying uncle by the third quarter, not from fatigue or from Willie Roaf, but from the stench of liquor in the Superdome.”
Hmm. OK, maybe I should have just called Babe Laufenberg.
Of the five fearless forecasters I contacted, four predicted the Rams to upset the Saints. So my pick is New Orleans.
By far, the Tampa Bay at Philadelphia game produced the most passionate prognosticating. As we talked, I could hear Channel 5’s David Finfrock dialing up the Philly weekend forecast. It isn’t going to be like the legendary David Letterman forecast from his days as a weatherman in Indianapolis — “mud balls the size of canned hams” — but close.
“I didn’t have a strong feel for either team on this game,” Finfrock said. “But what impresses me most are the nasty Philadelphia weather and the even nastier Eagles fans, especially if there’s snow on the ground. So I’m going with the Eagles.”
Three of the weather people picked the Eagles. The other two, Troy and Rebecca, are going with the better team, Tampa Bay.
“Eighty percent chance the Bucs will win,” Dungan said.
Jackson’s pick on the Colts-Dolphins game included everything but the Doppler radar.
“You’re probably looking at partly cloudy skies, with temperatures in the 60s to 70s,” Ron began. “And I like Miami simply because they’re playing in Miami.”
The only one who picked the Colts was Miller, who explained that she’s a Peyton Manning fan. Put me down for Indianapolis, too.
The fourth game of the weekend produced the only unanimous vote. All five weather people selected the Ravens over the Broncos.
I know what you’re thinking. A unanimous forecast?
But the Ravens will be positive proof that our local weather people can, indeed, get it all right.
They’ve been wrong before, of course.
Dungan tells about the time that the best meteorological minds in Fort Worth and Dallas predicted rain and then agreed to meet for lunch. None of them, as it turns out, brought an umbrella.
Ron Jackson remembers working for a TV station in Iowa, making an Easter Sunday prediction of “light drizzle, turning to flurries.” Viewers walked out of church to find seven inches of snow covering the ground.
Barton was working in Austin one Christmas when he awoke to find “three inches of my ‘partly cloudy’ on the ground.”
Snow happens. But as Miller put it, “No one remembers when we’re right.”
Which is why I sought their esteemed help in the first place, of course.
They’re due.
(Photo by iWeatherNet)
