PSA: Show your local meteorologists some respect, armchair weather forecasters

Park your "know it all" from one college semester ranting and raving, and prepare for a few winter weather days.

You would think meteorologists were getting a bonus for getting the forecast within 90% accuracy. Scrolling online or getting near social media like the rest of the billions in the world will land you on these armchair weather quarterbacks. If you thought those folks just existed in sports, think again. Know-it-all minds lurk everywhere, especially if there’s an opinion to be had.

Over the past few years, I have reduced the amount of topics I dish on because nobody wants to be the exposed idiot stuck out in the middle of a debate. The big debate around the Midwest and country is the snow and ice plowing into the region on Sunday morning. Specifically, the accumulation totals remain a mystery to even the sharpest weather minds. In other words, they will tell us it’s coming but the amount is still up in the air.

Since St. Louis is bordered and surrounded by big rivers and a horseshow the size of a skyscraper, there are winter storms that don’t blast the city as much as others. It all depends on wind patterns and the pressure system, and that’s the extent of my meteorology knowledge. The rest I will leave up to paid professionals who have access to graphs, charts, models, and possibilities for a storm that looks unusual. Remember that those visual presentations that you see Anthony Slaughter or Scott O’Connell posting during a broadcast were put together by them using information and statistics. They don’t simply use the clicker and have it magically appear before your eyes.

It’s more sophisticated than picking a plumbing item, putting it on a manifest, and shipping it to someone’s doorstep. Predicting the weather ends in a person and their team making a prediction. In the end, that’s all it is. You put the tools and expertise together and hope to make something stick. From the outside looking in, that’s the job.

What I can’t stand are the large masses of people who give these people shit. We’re talking about unreasonable “my life sucks so let’s roast the weatherman” bullshit that should be relegated to a middle school cafeteria. If you’re one of the few not on social media, consider yourself lucky, but those are actual humans with jobs and brains making those heinous comments on Slaughter’s Facebook post. All he does is inform you of what he knows without making any stupid predictions that include more historical hyperbole than actual data. He is prepping people. That is all.

Still, there’s Jackie from South County and 49 others who comment “They’re just saying this shit to get more viewers and attention for their station.” Well, look at someone understanding how television stations and ratings work. Yes, it was wise to post a day-by-day prediction chart when it comes to a storm developing, but that’s just a great use of a platform and where he works by Slaughter.

Don’t be the cut of waste of human space who continues to post on those threads the same, remedial reaction: “I’ll believe it when I see it.”

No offense (okay, a good amount actually) to the people who uttered that phrase today, but if meteorologists did that, many regions would be clobbered without warning. Schools, businesses, homeowners, and anyone else with a schedule can get something organized in case a blizzard takes shape in their zip code. Imagine if the weather folks on television walked in front of your television screen or phone screen and said, “We have all these models and stuff to help us make a decent (80% or better) prediction, we’ll just believe this powdery white stuff when we see eight inches stacked up on our deck."

They’d be fired. It would be quick and merciless. Yes, it’s our right to say that, but do everyone a favor and keep it to yourself. Maybe tell your friends to keep an eye on the forecast within 48 hours when the real concrete info settles in. Be the one in the crowd of seven who says most of what they’re giving you isn’t hearsay but actually data coming hot off the charts in their newsroom.

If you need that outside STL source to confirm what the still hard-working local men and women are putting out there, check the Weather Channel. Few places that predict weather have more money or bodies invested in building those reports. Wherever you get it, respect it.

Respect the hustle that goes into the job of a meteorologist with the whole country or multiple cities watching their work on an hour-to-hour basis. I hope there isn’t someone out there in a Chesterfield neighborhood who hears about a local plumbing supply delivery happening Friday and immediately spits out, “Well, that’s absolute bullshit.”

The same people who say these things complain when the big storm hits that there wasn’t ample time to prepare for such a catastrophe. And there is where the pot of human society meets the kettle of predictability.

Analyzing weather patterns includes a lot of predictions. The reaction to those reports is unfortunately also stuffed full of predictable heartless responses.

My advice: Don’t be an asshat.