Weather or Not

As a big weather-watcher and subscriber to the Weather Underground website (which I've plugged here in the past), I am a bit worried to hear it's been acquired by the folks who operate the Weather Channel. I rarely watch the Weather Channel or visit its site so I can't assess their accuracy…but when I do tune them in or visit their site, it always strikes me that they tend to look at weather from way too far back.

The future of weathercasting is, I'm sure, in delivering forecasts and data that are specific to zip codes and precise areas. A forecast that covers all of Southern California is of little use or interest to me; not unless the weather is so extreme that they can say it won't rain anywhere in Southern California or that it will rain everywhere. On days when rain is possible, the latter is usually not the case. Usually, it's that it will rain somewhere and I'd kinda like to know where. Granted, a TV station can't have its people up there saying, "We see a small storm moving down Melrose Avenue…" but if you compare the Weather Channel site to Weather Underground, W.U. is moving in that direction and Weather Channel deals in blanket predictions that cover a large area and are therefore of less use.

It's way too soon to forecast W.U. becoming more like W.C. instead of the other way around. But we are issuing a Watch.