Moscow's weather dependence

Luzhkov proposes to punish weather forecasters with rubles for bad forecasts, and this is retold as a joke. A person becomes a hostage to his own image. First he puts on a cap, then he breeds bees at his dacha, then he breeds Tsereteli everywhere, and now he wants to be taken seriously? But the mayor of the capital is right! It’s only in the song that nature doesn’t have bad weather, and it’s almost a blessing, and we must also gratefully accept it. It feels like the weather is most often just bad, and especially in Moscow. Who's to blame? Believers point to God, non-believers point to the Heavenly Office, but you can’t ask one way or the other. Forecasters are another matter.

In general, there has always been a painful and reverent attitude towards the weather forecast in our country. Even if you are not leaving home, you need to know the weather! For the sake of “millimeters of mercury” and “partly cloudy clouds,” people seem to only turn on the radio and TV. More than once I noticed how, having calmed those around him and turned up the volume, a person carefully looked through the ticker and listened to the weather forecaster’s voice, but after that he could not say how many degrees they promised there. For many, it has simply turned into a ritual: sit down, turn it on, listen - and it doesn’t matter what they promise. Although, on the other hand, there are many who know by heart all the weather records and signs. Men turn on Meteo-TV reports not for the sake of long-legged beauties with convex shapes, but for the sake of cyclones and anticyclones! At the same time, the irresistible urge to obtain a forecast is combined with absolute disbelief in it. With inexplicable voluptuousness, Russians say every time: well, they lied again.

The capital's mayor, unlike the ordinary Muscovite, has a method of influencing the oracles. And here he is certainly right in this sense. A forecast, of course, is just that: a forecast. How can one accurately describe something that has yet to happen? However, weather forecasters often get it right. Much more often than political or sports forecasters. However, unlike sports and political, a meteorological forecast is a serious thing, of national economic importance, a job for which people receive money. Since they have chosen prediction as their profession, they must predict as effectively as possible. And if they fail to do this, then, naturally, they must bear financial responsibility.

But here it is necessary to make some clarifications. The weather forecast is not “a red sunset means frost” and not “birds fly low - it means rain.” The next winter is not determined by tree moss, and the direction of the wind is not calculated by a slobbering finger. Hydromet consists of observation stations throughout the country, these are probes in the sky and satellites in space. These are thousands of people and hundreds of millions of dollars. And after the collapse of the Union, our unified meteorological space collapsed, more than half of the weather stations were closed, and the rest were left without money, with only thermometers and mercury columns in the hands of elderly employees. The United States and Japan have several computer centers worth more than one hundred million dollars each. And the entire budget of Roshydromet does not exceed ninety million USD. To the largest country in the world. But this is the case when size matters most directly. Allegedly, there is a plan to modernize the service, supposedly supercomputers will be supplied for half a billion dollars, and even the World Bank is ready to allocate a loan for this matter that exceeds the entire annual budget of weather forecasters. When this will happen is another question. But when it happens, when meteorologists are equipped with everything most advanced and necessary, and they continue, as Luzhkov aptly put it, to give out bullshit instead of forecasts, only then will it be possible to transfer all these would-be forecasters to building managers without severance pay.

And as a postscript.

On the accuracy of forecasts. When smart people, based on some popular wisdom, assure you that the summer will be hot or the winter supposedly snowy, do not believe them. I delved into this issue specifically and consulted with weather experts. It is impossible to give a forecast for the entire season! And a month in advance is impossible. There are simply no cyclones, air masses, sea currents and other factors that will affect the weather in a month! The most approximate, extremely superficial forecast can be given a maximum of 12 days in advance. But the error will be very large. It is also difficult to predict a week in advance. In reality, accurate forecasts from weather forecasters should be required for a period of three to four days. In the meantime, with the current level of logistics, they cannot confidently look further than a couple of days.