I want to take a straw poll, here. Do you ever catch yourself thinking that your husband (or any guy you know, for that matter) is from a distant planet when it comes to the weather? Like maybe he’s an alien?
Men go to elaborate measures to predict the weather – ten phone calls a day to the local weather line or slavish devotion to the internet weather network. Said men are often very confident in these means of weather prediction. I have witnessed heated debates about which data gathering source is more reliable.
If I want to know what the weather is like, I stick my head out the door and look around. It works for me. If I see a good weather wind scooting down the lake, I feel confident the rain will hold off. An opposite wind with dark clouds hovering near the end of the lake is a sure sign of trouble.
I hung clothes on the line today even though Bruce assured me over the phone that it would rain. He was several miles away as he gave his dire warning. I looked out the window and said, “Lots of blue sky, here.” He replied, “No way, it’s going to rain. I just called the weather line.”
He was so sure of more rain that he had me walk to and from the turbine shed four times in order to eke out a few more amps from the micro-hydro generator.
It goes something like this. I walk up and shut the turbine down. I walk back to the cabin. I turn off the low power switch – only good if the power is lower than 15 amps. I walk back to the turbine shed and turn on a combination of two nozzles to equal 15 amps. Previous to this morning’s instructions we were running on one 10 amp nozzle. I walk back to the cabin and monitor power levels for the next hour.
Meanwhile the sun is shining – great news – I check the Outback Monitor and discover 20 amps of solar power coming in. Before the hour is up the micro-hydro power has dropped to 5 amps. Hmmm – I suspected as much. I walk back to the turbine and check the gauge. Instead of 80 p.s.i. we are at 40. I shut the turbine down and head back to the cabin. I turn the low power switch back on and have a piece of toast and a coffee. It takes a while for the pipe to refill. I head back up to the turbine shed and turn on the one 10 amp nozzle that we had running to start with.
No worries – it’s a nice day to walk back and forth and even though I seriously doubted his 98% assurance of rain and thus more power, (why is anyone compelled to put a percentage on their surety? It’s bound to come to no good.) I went along with the plan. You never know.
The day goes on – no rain and more than a few bursts of sunshine. I decide to grab an afternoon coffee and go for a walk. By walk I mean wander around the place taking pictures and sitting on my favourite benches. It’s all good. All the benches are dry, by the way. Just saying.
A fellow blogger – Jennie Orbell – recently put up a Facebook post with a photo captioned: The Original Coffee-Cup in a Tree. (If you want to follow a really hilarious author/blogger who posts on gardening, her life adventures and all things in between, please follow Jennie.) I was inspired. I went out that very afternoon and put two teacups in shrubs. Can’t even imagine what Bruce will say when he notices these. I might get lucky and that elusive rain will hide all.
Oh double drat – the rain came while I was writing. I’ve got to rescue those clothes.
Is a prediction delayed still a valid prediction?
disappearinginplainsight 
” Is a prediction delayed still a valid prediction?” My hubby and I had this VERY conversation this morning. He’d say YES, with 100% chance of daylight.
Actually, I’m the weather geek in our household. It’s not really thunder-storming until I see the radar image on the website.
Thanks for the tip to Jennie’s site!
You’re most welcome, Maggie and thanks for dropping by and commenting. You’ll love Jennie’s blog. 100% chance of daylight – I like that. And a challenge to my gender stereotypes – right on 🙂
LOL (for laughing out loud-ish): I do both! I check the weather on the web, AND I look at the sky, and I debate within myself which is more likely to be correct!! However, living in a rather more urban context, I have less sky to look at, and am not too conversant with the ways of the winds … Today thankfully I didn’t trust the sky and left the laundry (damp) indoors in its basket while I went out – taking my umbrella. Returned under umbrella in heavy rain, and dumped laundry into the dryer…
It doesn’t seem to matter how much information we have access to, it’s always a toss-up. Bring the umbrella, just in case. The laundry is going out again today – we’ll see.
I’m afraid I’m one of those weather geeks, and love to look at the details on my smart phone. One ap there actually tells me what will occur in the next x number of minutes! I have found it to be unerringly accurate, which I find highly entertaining. My husband’s work sometimes requires him to know about the weather, but his resources are different from mine, so we either loyally support our own, or even better, combine the two and see what we get. It’s just pure fun. Unless you’re out on the river and a thunderstorm is on the way!
Great answer, Susan – combine knowledge and information. So true – it is all fun until it really matters. To be fair to Bruce, he needs to feel pretty sure about the forecast over a few days before he opens a roof up at any time in the Pacific Northwest. His sources are often quite accurate. I just like to poke a bit of fun when my fly by the seat of my pants approach does and doesn’t work out.
I don’t know about men, but in this house, I am the one who keeps track of the weather, even though my daughter poo poos it all the time. ‘I do not believe what they say’, she tells me. I like The ‘Countryfile’ weather forecast. Even from my Ipad.
Evelyn
Another challenge to my stereotype – I’m going to have to drop it and admit that this is just me and Bruce, not men and women in general.
I’m the weatherman in our house, Fran…hence the name, Weatherholt. I always thought I should have been a meteorologist. My head (sinuses) is like a giant barometer. I can feel every change in the jet stream and every storm within 100 miles. 🙂
Love your photos!
Okay, now I am totally chastised – all these women who are the weather keepers. I love your way of tracking – via sinuses. Hope it isn’t painful. You rock on with the weather, Weatherholt – LOL.
So far, I’ve never missed on a thunderstorm prediction. 🙂
What a great post! All day long today my husband has been asking if it was going to rain, reminding me that we need rain, thinking he heard that certainly it will rain soon, asking me please to double check the weather report online because he knows rain is in the forecast. Haha! It was a blue sky, very few clouds, no rain day, as I knew it would be. However, rain will be coming in a few days. The cat had a sneezing jag today. That’s a sure predictor of rain!
A woman after my own heart 🙂 And love your cat’s sneezing as weather predictor. Bound to be as predictable as most weather broadcasts. Bring on the rain.
In the UK if cricketers come out to play it WILL rain.
In Manchester they say, with accuracy, ‘if you can see the Pennines it’s going to rain. If you can’t see the Pennines then it’s already raining.’
Your cricketers comment made me think of Liam telling his dad that talking about camping under the stars on the West Coast of Vancouver Island was an absolute invitation for a downpour. (The Light Never Lies) That is based on experience. If we head over to the West Coast to camp out it will rain – no amount of predictions of sunshine can change that! I love the Manchester forecast – straight-up – rain all the time. What fun.
So very true, Francis. My husband is always delaying our trips to the boat to just check the weather one last time on the weather channel. One day we were stranded in our car in a parking lot waiting for the rain to stop so we could go boating. I said, “It’s raining pretty hard. The sky looks bleak in every direction.” He didn’t hear me because he was frantically trying to get a signal on his phone to check the weather. We finally went home when radar showed a large black cloud over our area that wasn’t moving. Geez, so glad we had that phone with us or I’d never known it was raining with no end in sight. My hubby has it so bad that he even passed it along to his daughter who is a meteorologist. She married a meteorologist as well. At least they’re making a living from their love of weather. Great post.
Thank goodness someone else’s experience supports my gender breakdown when it comes to weather prediction. Hilarious story – yes indeed – lucky you had that phone and the handy-dandy weather line to call. I sympathize with your situation – you are surrounded by weather types for sure. Good luck with that.
😀
Well, my husband is the one who is always prepared with umbrella, rain jacket, sturdy boots; I am the one without umbrella, carrying a bag without closure that contains important documents, wearing a sleeveless vest and open toed shoes…so I think I’d best stay quiet on this one…
Dang it, in the time it took to read your post, it has started teeming down and, you’ve guessed it, I’ve no umbrella, have I..?
Good points, done with your typical dash of give-me-a-laugh style, Jackie. I admit, Bruce will probably be prepared for weather events more often than I will but somehow, knowing in advance, just seems to take the fun out of things. What’s the point of hoping it will clear up? Then again, being caught out without an umbrella is no fun either – unless of course you luck into one of those singing in the rain moments.
Wow, I have to say I’m thankful to live On the Grid. But everything is a trade-off, I suppose. I don’t have your view, for example.
Bruce sounds a like our custodian at school, whose obsession with the weather drives me crazy. But Mr. Custodian is a glass-half-empty kind of guy, who’s always looking for excuses to keep the students from going outside for recess. He’ll say things like “Get ready. It’s supposed to rain all next week.” Or “They say it’s gonna be a frigid winter.” Or “Temperature’s gonna drop by 20 degrees this afternoon.” Who really cares what the weather is, anyway? It is what it is. I always say if we Chicagoans sat inside waiting for ideal weather conditions, we’d never leave the house!
Great post. You had me laughing more than once!
Only in winter does my husband think about the weather. Like me, he doesn’t like snow, and we anxiously watch the weather to see when we should shop for food, or enjoy an afternoon out while we can. At other times of year we know that rain is often a possibility so just live with it.
It certainly does matter when the snow is flying! But like you guys, we adjust and work around rain. Part of everyday life in the Pacific Northwest. I’ve been known to take clothes on and off the line more than four times throughout a day. It starts to get down to me or the rain – who will win out with careful calculations on my part as to whether the wind coming up just might compensate for a few raindrops. Oh, the weather – endlessly fascinating.