Stupid Cows (March 5, 2009)

This was the scene when we arrived at the Garden Constant a little after 4:30 p.m. yesterday (March 5, 2009).  If you look closely, you can see the temperature was somewhere around 85º on the thermometer attached to the north side of the gatepost.

We've come to be skeptical of the prophecies of our local weather seers.  Although few of them work for the U.S. government, most of their data come from there.  And to be fair, weather is a life and death issue for most of the local economy.  The Garden Constant is on municipal water, so weather is not quite as critical, but after the last rate hike, conservation has become a pocketbook issue.

For some time, we've suspected that the rain men were deliberately lowballing the forecasts for the day's high temperature, after we noticed that the reported high always seemed to be five or six degrees warmer than what we were given to expect.  The Cold Weather Rule, which prevents utility companies from shutting off residential service when the  temperature is expected to fall below the low to mid 30s, applies only from about Halloween to April Fool's Day.  This is March, but the rule still doesn't apply.

Yesterday's high temperature was supposed to have been 79º, for instance.  Around here, the warmest it gets is around 3:30 to 5:00 in the afternoon, with fairly rapid cooling as darkness settles over the landscape.  This is a function of the low humidity in the semi-arid grassland where the City at the Edge of Dreams is located, and of the steady prevailing winds.  We can't imagine who would stand to gain by foretelling temperatures lower than they actually turn out to be, but this seems to be what's happened.

It's possible that there's some kind of Federal funding at stake here, or that the meteorological community is taking some kind of position on the dreaded global warming.  If so, we can't imagine what it would be.  We have no idea what's going on, so we're inclined to put the blame on the cows.