Below Freezing

I have to admit that I have an obsession with the weather and I don't know why. I just love to watch or read the weather forecast, but it is almost always wrong. This morning we were slip-sliding on the walkway outside of our condo thanks to the ice. I went inside to check the temperature on the weather page of a local TV station's website. It was laughable. The current temperature was displayed as 29 degrees and right under it was the day's forecast: Low of 33, High of 37. Hmmm, somebody's not paying attention. It reminded me of something my brother told me about recently, so here it is -a quote from The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce:

WEATHER, n. The climate of the hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who have inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned. The setting up official weather bureaus and their maintenance in mendacity prove that even governments are accessible to suasion by the rude forefathers of the jungle.

Once I dipt into the future far as human eye could see, And I saw the Chief Forecaster, dead as any one can be — Dead and damned and shut in Hades as a liar from his birth, With a record of unreason seldom paralleled on earth. While I looked he reared him solemnly, that incandescent youth, From the coals that he'd preferred to the advantages of truth. He cast his eyes about him and above him; then he wrote On a slab of thin asbestos what I venture here to quote — For I read it in the rose-light of the everlasting glow: "Cloudy; variable winds, with local showers; cooler; snow."
—Halcyon Jones