Forecasts and Models

I understand why atmospheric scientists are so enamored with their models, but really, don't they know there are folks like me and little kids who wake up at 4 AM to see if it really is snowing,  just like they forecast?  And it isn't.  Sigh.

When I was in forestry school modeling was at the end of being all the rage, or at least the FORPLAN version of modeling.  Of course, the "tech" foresters have devised new and better models, such as landscape modeling.  But in the end, it really is all about taking historic statistical data and trying to manipulate it to predict what will happen in the future.  And as always nature adds a variable that wasn't in the historic data and that no one sitting in front of a computer imagined could happen.  Think current economic melt-down and all the bank and mortgage lenders models based on what they learned in B-School.  Or all the stock traders to base their decisions on algorithms devised by some MIT mathematician.

So, it's not snowing.  It still might, apparently, but not as I write this.  And not as much snow as they "modeled" a few days ago.  

At least my parents have enough food (I based my grocery shopping on their models) and Sage has a great supply of chewies.

Murphy's day.