Weather or Not

For years I, like most people probably, puzzled over the odds the weather people give us. How, I wondered, do they arrive at a "fifty percent chance of rain," or "eighty-percent?" It seemed like there was never a correlation between the number they forecast and the reality. As with so much in life, it's not what it seems. It's not, as one might think, a matter of what will be, but rather what has been. It's just the percentage of times, given the same temperature, barometric pressure and wind direction, that it's rained on that day of the year in the past. But also like so much else we deal with in modern life, it doesn't make a bit of difference. For one thing, who cares whether the chance of rain is fifty percent or eighty, you're still going to want to take an umbrella to work. For another thing, no matter what the numbers, the only umbrella you can find is the broken one. I like the forecast I heard on the radio years ago: "Rain tonight, followed by tomorrow."