Have You Checked the Doppler?

My grandparents were obsessed with the upcoming weather report. 

I remember being young and being sworn to silence during the weather portion of the local news.

Through the years, living here in Buffalo, I’ve had to pay attention to the weather to learn if we were going to get blasted by snow.

I hate checking the weather.

Nowadays, there’s a weather app in all of our pockets. I’ll tell the tale of two weekends.

Last weekend, I was in Syracuse for a golf outing for one of my clients. There were a lot of people showing up.

I first checked the weather by looking at the sky outside my hotel room window.

“Ugh.”

Then I opened the weather app and saw 80% with the lightning and rain 🌧️ emoji.

I learned that 80% isn’t the percentage chance of rain, but rather how much of the local area that would be saturated. That 80% was listed by each hour that we were supposed to be on the course.

I firmly believed that I’d eat lunch and head home, not even swinging the club once.

“We’ll be all right,” the company owner said.

“Did you check the radar?” I asked.

“F*ck the radar,” he said.

We played 18 holes…

…seeing nary a drop.

On the way home last week, I checked the Buffalo weather for the morning.

70% lightning and rain.

“Bah!” I was scheduled to play again.

I got up and went anyway.

Played 18 without seeing a drop.

Cut to yesterday.

The pre-round worry was being passed around by text.

I checked the app.

There wasn’t even rain forecasted between 9:00 & 1:00!

It would certainly rain sometime during the day, but I wandered outside to throw the ball for Ollie and looked up.

“Clear skies!”

By the time I finished the Ollie round, every member of the crew I was supposed to play with had backed out!

“The forecast looks rough!”

Nearly three hours after we were to tee off, I’d yet to see a single drop of rain.

“Why aren’t I hitting a golf ball right now?” Another buddy texted.

“Meteorologists,” I said. “We’ve all become meteorologists who are scared out of our minds to golf in a light drizzle.”

So, I didn’t play at all this weekend!

And it hardly freaking rained during the hours we could’ve played.

But the app didn’t look good!!

My buddy last weekend had it right:

“F*ck the radar!”