T.V. WEATHER

There's a lot of weather on television these days. After every news bulletin, for instance. And at least twice an hour on the 24-hour news channel. There is also in some countries (though not yet in Denmark, thank goodness) a 24-hour weather channel.

What's surprising about it is the proportion that is useless. I can understand wishing to know what the weather will be tomorrow; I might decide to go to the beach if it is going to be very hot, or not paint an outside wall if it is going to rain. But I don't need to know what the weather is right now, since I can work that out by looking out of the window. And I certainly don't need to know what the weather will be in 5 days' time.

I would like to find out exactly how many "5 day hence" predictions end up being true or false, because I suspect that many of them turn out not to be correct. I could of course do my own survey, by methodically comparing prediction versus outcome over (say) a year. But that would require far too much weather-watching and take us back to paragraph 1.

Walter Blotscher