Confessions of a Weather Junkie

 

Let me finally come clean and admit it: I have a bit of an issue with the weather. Now, I feel a little better since I read The Ballad of Dry Betty at Gardening Gone Wild.  Here's a kindred soul is also obsessed enough to run out right after the storm in flip-flops and check. I have a frog rain gage, that I bought for very little money at a discount store. It's even more kitschy-looking in reality, but it does the job. 

Here's the ugly truth, though. The frog isn't enough for me. I also check the Santa Clara Valley Water District's ALERT pages. The Precipitation gauge shows 10.91 inches for Mountain View (take that, Palo Alto! Only 8.74?). The Reservoir gauge is also quite interesting, and shows how far we still have to go for this year. 50% for Lexington Reservoir? And here I thought we were at 120% after all that rain. 

And of course, I'm also no longer satisfied with the weather forecast the likes of Yahoo! or the Weather Channel have to offer. A picture may say more than 1 000 words, but these pictures don't say enough for my taste. 

Instead, I've become quite addicted to the NWS Text Forecast. You can find the forecast for the Santa Clara Valley here. Now that's a forecast! I love to read about the troughs and ridges and "model inconsistencies."

EXTENDED FORECAST IS A LITTLE JUMBLED BUT BEST ESTIMATE BRINGS THE
NEXT BOUNDARY THROUGH THE REGION ON THURSDAY EVENING...WITH THE BEST
CHANCE FOR PRECIP IN THE NORTH BAY. STILL A FAIR AMOUNT OF MODEL
INCONSISTENCY ON THIS BUT NO HINT AT ANY SIGNIFICANT PRECIP.

That's a forecast! Who needs the pictures! Now, if I could just stop checking it 3 times a day, or maybe 4 times, or... It really does take too much time away from going out and checking the frog.

Well, thank goodness, I usually recover by May when the forecast is always for dry weather, and I only have to see whether it will be warm or too warm. Of course I still check once a day. You never know, and I like to be prepared.