h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

As far as I can tell, there is none. Good article, by the way!

...hey...stumbled accross this...anywho...yea...there actually is a slight difference...one has more clouds than the other...but I can never remember which...anywho...from the point of view of an undergrad student in the field of meteorology...I'm actually more offended by the fact that this is the first entry to show up on a search for meteorology...anywho...can't resist adding that those predictions are for an area...this means that weather will vary from location to location in that area...in areas that have large differences in geography, especially in the case of mountains, these variations in weather from location to location vary even more...areas like the southern california coastline have forecast zones that include both shoreline and mountain ranges in a short distance and the result is that , while heavy rain might be predicted for the coastline and light rain for the mountains, in actuality, the coastline gets innundated while the mountains might not get any rain at all...only a slight difference between the prediction and the outcome that could have resulted from a number of factors such as

anywho...like I said...I'm not really offended by the article...as a meteorology you kinda have to accept that you're forecast won't be entirely accurate and for that matter almost never 100% accurate...and thus people will complain...it comes with the job...(although I'm into Tropical Meteorology which as far as I see gets fewer complaints...but if I'm entirely wrong the consequences aren't that someone got rained on but that at the very least it's a case of the boy who cried wolf...) Oh...and also it's worth noting that not every TV weatherman was a meteorology major or has even nessicarily studied meteorology...although the vast majority of them (at least on the more local tv stations) have had training in forecast meteorology...it's the bigger stations (with the exception of the weather channel) that generally will hire someone who looks good on tv over a trained meteorologist and almost every station will try and make the forecast look all flashy with wierd 3-D radar angles that make understanding whats going on harder...which is actually quite a pet peev of mine...as well as a couple of my proffesors and weather friends...hmmm...yea...sorry for going off on a rant...although I suppose this'd be a good place to do it......anywho...