David Jenkins: Ever-changing weather forecast is frustrating

Every time I check and look at Monday’s weather I get something different. Rain. No snow. No rain and then snow. No just rain. No just snow. And on and on it goes.

I am amazed sometimes at how technology has advanced. We can put a man on the moon. We can type a message on our phone and instantly send it to someone clear across the world. We can take out someone’s organ and replace it with another and yet nobody can actually tell me if it is going to rain or snow or Monday.

Just last week I had my eye on the forecast that called for rain. As the owner of a home that currently has a leaky basement I am keeping my eye on the weather as I wait for someone to fix the blasted thing. So when I saw rain with accumulations of an inch or less I was concerned but not worried. I should have been worried as it rained so hard I had an inch of water in my basement with another 12 hours of rain left.

But it isn’t just Southeast Missouri where the weather men get it wrong. They couldn’t get Hurricane Dorian right either. While I think it was just our President who said it was going to hit Alabama, the forecasters weren’t any better predicting a massive hurricane that turned out to be a tropical storm that showed up days later than expected.

I think being a weather man has to be a lot like being a baseball player. In baseball, a player that has a career getting a hit three out of every 10 times at bat has a chance to get into the Hall of Fame. I think the same for a meteorologist. If they get three days right out of a 10-day forecast they are hall of famers.

But I’ll be honest. I can’t even watch the weather on television anymore. Much like the young baseball players that throw their bats every time they hit a home run, the weather people on television love to come on and make it a show. They will cut in on your television show and make you think the world is going to end.

“There is a tornado warning for Sikeston. If you live in that area, you are probably going to die if you don’t have a basement. You need to get there now…”

That’s usually when I would look outside and see some clouds but no tornado or even rain.

So as I get ready for Monday and the calls for rain or snow change minute by minute I can only expect either a monsoon or a blizzard right? Or maybe it will just be cloudy or even sunny. If you don’t like it just check back in 30 minutes and they’ll change it again.

David Jenkins is co-editor of the Standard Democrat.