On Weather Forecasts and "Trusting the Science."

I’m writing this from Knoxville, Tennessee, where the entire town was more or less shut down by fears of a historically huge blizzard that never happened. At one point last week, there were models showing upward of 29” of snow for us

I discounted that at the time, but the models’ consensus was still over a foot of snow.

We actually got a few flurries and some rain and sleet that never even turned into an ice storm as predicted.

Now I don’t mean to fault the weathermen, and women, too much. There’s is an uncertain and chaotic — in the literal, mathematical sense — discipline. And big snows where I live occur when we get a clash of cold air from up north, and warm moist air from the Gulf. Mix ‘em just right and you can get a foot, or even two, of snow. Get it just a bit wrong and you get rain, or no precipitation to speak of at all.

We got rain, which is cold and depressing, but doesn’t make the roads impassable and doesn’t knock down power lines. I’ll take it.

Of course, it leaves a lot of people unhappy. Students who thought they could look forward to a day — or three — off from classes are now glumly turning to their homework. Even in my case, though I’m basically relieved not to be stuck at home, it seems like a bit of a letdown after all the buildup.