Voices in My Head: Weatherman

As I watched the weather report for the upcoming 4th of July celebration I began to envy the guy standing in front of the map explaining to me that we're sure to have a bright, sunny holiday. You see he may not have the most glamorous job, in fact as far as the news report goes he has the position with the least action involved. The sports guy undoubtedly holds someone's financial future in his hands as he reads the nightly scores. The anchor men and women tell us about the day's biggest tragedies and the "on the scene" reporters are out there in the thick of it all delivering information from the actual location of the story.

While the weatherman may be the lowest form of entertainment on the nightly newscast he is the one who's position I admire most. At my job if I mess up I hear about it. If I mess up a second time I can risk my job and the respect of my peers. Not the weather guy. He can call it wrong night after night after night and still we wait up until well after our bed time to see what he has to say.

Can you imagine if the others on the news team had the same record as the weather reporter? If the sports guy reported the wrong scores it would probably cost him dearly. If he went so far as to report a player had been traded to one team instead of the correct team he would probably lose his job. Not the weather guy though. He stands up there with a goofy grin on his face, shows us all the fancy maps in motion, tells us that there are clear skies from now through the weekend and then drives home in torrential rain without losing a wink of sleep.

What if the anchorman reported that the president was seen singing Karaoke at a local Chinese restaurant? He'd begin collecting his severance package that very night. But when the weather man all but promises my kids a snow day and we wake up to sunshine and clear skies and not so much as one snow flake on the ground he just chuckles and gives us some smart weather jargon and moves on to the current day's missed forecast.

I'd like to propose we have a new set of rules for our weather forecasters. A boundary of accountability so that if they can't get it right, they can't be a weather man. For example, the first time they get the weather wrong by at least ten degrees or six inches of precipitation they have to do the following night's newscast in a donkey suit. Seems fitting doesn't it?

The next time they mess up they have to sing a show tune and tap dance throughout the entire newscast to take us into each commercial break.

If I was a weatherman I probably wouldn't even pretend like these guys do. Honesty is the best policy. I would simply stand up there in front of the fancy maps and tell the people that the weather tomorrow is going to be exactly the way it looks in the morning. If its summer time then I'll tell them there's a pretty good chance it's going to be warm. If winter, well then bring a sweater because that means cold. And you should always have an umbrella nearby in case we get some sort of precipitation.

Come to think of it, why not eliminate the weather report altogether? How about a comedian caps off the newscast with four or five minutes of relevant jokes to put us to bed in a good mood after all the misery the other reporters spewed out at us?

Or better yet we could have some gypsy woman get up there and read some Tarot cards to us. Her fortune telling is probably more accurate than my local weather guy. I think the sports guy should add a segment to his report on the number of weather forecasts that were wrong each week. At the end of six months if the weatherman is batting less than fifty percent he gets replaced.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, we had rain on the 4th of July. Thanks again genius.