The trouble with weather forecasting is that it’s right too often for us to ignore it, and wrong too often for us to rely on it. – Patrick Young

Here’s a funny thing we like to say about Colorado.

“If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.”

Ha-ha! That’s a good one. No wonder it’s also a funny thing people like to say about Oregon, and Ocala, and just every other county and commonwealth between the Gulf and the Great White North. Weather is weird wherever you are, and second-guessing it is, more often than not, a fool’s errand.

Trying to read the world’s atmospheric mind has been a popular pursuit since earliest times, and simple observation can sometimes yield reasonably accurate short-term forecasts. True, the ancient mariner’s warning that a red sky in the morning foretells foul weather afoot is an unwitting recognition that a ship is entering a low pressure area where heavy weather is more likely. Conversely, a red sky at night (“sailor’s delight”) may indicate the vessel is entering a high pressure zone and should encounter calm seas. How many sailed through a crimson sunset and straight into Davy Jones’ Locker will never be known.

Woolly mullein, aka “Miner’s Candle”

While government and industry spend billions annually trying to get the drop on Mother Nature, local amateur forecasters make confident pronouncements based on how the trout are biting, where the elk are feeding, what the marmots are stashing, when the pippets are leaving, the current height of Miner’s Candle and the relative wooliness of the woolly bear caterpillar. But, whether meteorologist or mook, the fact is that they’re all just guessing.

Even short-term weather predictions are chancy, at best. The seven-day forecast, a staple of television news, may be marginally better than licking your finger and holding it out the window, but you still schedule a tee-time at your own risk. Nationally, weather forecasters trying to prophesy the temperature within a 10-degree margin of error have a success rate lingering on the shady side of 50 percent. Still, short-term weather prediction is a rock-solid certainty compared to long-range forecasting.

In ancient times, a herdsman trying to divine the character of the coming season would look for clues in nature. He might observe the behavior of his animals, and study the movements of wild creatures. He could find signs in the taste of the wind, or the patterns of clouds, or the appearance of prairie grasses. After accumulating and digesting the whole of his environment, he would decide whether the life-giving rains would come, or whether his small band must journey on to more hospitable regions. Dead wrong, he and the better part of his clan would perish and the survivors would curse his name unto seven generations. This demonstrates the reassuring historical consistency of long-range weather forecasting. In modern times, a constellation of satellites provides a detailed global portrait for skilled technicians to examine before reaching erroneous conclusions.

Those who have knowledge don’t predict. Those who predict don’t have knowledge. – Lao Tzu

Take the Boulder-based National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, for example. Drawing on information collected by a host of satellites, buoys, advanced radar imaging systems and atmospheric testing stations around the planet, the scientists at NOAA labor mightily the calendar ‘round trying to predict weather trends. Loaded to the gunnels with physical and statistical data, sophisticated computers churn out complex weather models describing what the weather will be doing tonight, tomorrow, next week, next month and so forth. It’s important to know that those same painstakingly devised computer models, exhaustively fed all available data, can rarely be coaxed into correctly predicting weather that has already happened, much less what’s coming down the pike. Worse, the only real ally those high-tech shamans have in their corner is a famously ambiguous oracle who speaks in an as-yet untranslatable tongue. Who is this muffle-mouthed mystic? It’s El Nino, of course, the befuddled forecaster’s best friend and favorite climatological hobgoblin.

The forecaster’s friend

“El Nino,” testifies NOAA scientist Klaus Weckman, “is the only thing that makes long-range forecasting even remotely possible.”

By closely monitoring the temperature and movement of the warm-water phenomenon as it builds in the Pacific Ocean, and because weather in North America tends to move in from the west, experts are occasionally moved to make cautiously vague predictions about the affect El Nino might have on points east. Despairing NOAA researchers doomed to anticipate Colorado’s long-range winter outlook must first drag themselves through a vertigo-inducing wilderness of dry statistics and labyrinthine diagrams, the pockets of their white lab coats stuffed with tear-stained tissues and Tylenol No. 4. Those who survive the journey put on a clean tie and issue a tepid statement that carefully discounts its own conclusions.

“According to the latest experimental forecasts for January-March,” reads one masterful example of the dissembler’s art, “the odds for above-normal precipitation reach significant levels over the north-central mountains of Colorado. This forecast precipitation pattern should be viewed with more caution than usual, as historical analogue cases for an El Nino event like the current one do not support strong tilts in the odds over Colorado.”

Put another way, after examining everything from Sonoran heat signatures to monsoon patterns in far Ceylon, those hyper-educated climatons at NOAA can announce with absolute conviction that we’re in for generally wintry weather characterized by non-specific winter-like conditions, but you didn’t hear it from us.

Considering the immense impact weather has on civilization and commerce, it’s kind of surprising that we don’t know more about it. Thousands of years of accumulated human knowledge can’t tell us if we should throw the chains in the trunk. The finest minds, employing the most wondrous technologies, don’t know what the slopes will look on Valentine’s Day weekend.

Dressed for it

And the woolly bear caterpillar ain’t talking.

A lot of people like snow. I find it to be an unnecessary freezing of water. – Carl Reiner