Don't Mess With The Weathermen

My old man is retired from the National Weather Service, and based on my interactions with his coworkers, employees, and friends over the years, I can tell you there is no geek like a weather geek. Seriously: if they scheduled SABR on the same weekend as a storm chaser convention and a college cheerleading competition, the SABR guys would get all of the action while the weather people kicked the wall and complained about having to compete with all of the cool baseball beefcake.

It's that bad.

That said, you never want to mess with a weather geek. Ever. Because while forecasting itself is an inexact science, weather geeks are a smart damn lot who, because they have absolutely no social life, will spend hours on end to show you just how wrong you are when you attack them or their methodology.

To wit, here's a link to a fantastic blog post by a baseball fan/meteorologist named Owen Doherty, who is none too happy with Bud Selig blaming the weathermen for the decision to go ahead and try to play Game Five on Monday night:

Rapidly strengthening nor’easters are not to be trifled with, so it’s not surprise that the game wasn’t completed. Except to perhaps running major league baseball, who blamed the game suspension on poor weather forecasting . . .The only problem with mlb’s position is that the forecast was actually RIGHT, as reported by national weather online.

Via deft links and radar analysis, Doherty dismantles Selig's baloney that he was misled about the weather. If Selig thought about the issue at all, he knew it was going to rain, he knew it was going to rain a lot, and he decided to go forward anyhow.

(link via Posnanski)