Why do the weather people even bother with 10-day forecasts? The Smoots are heading out on a big trip next week, so that means that I have been spending about 78% of my recent days viewing weather forecasts for our destinations. I was actually relieved when I saw that some of the forecasts were calling for rain for the days we'll be visiting; this almost certainly means that the weather will be absolutely sunny and wonderful!
If the forecasters wanted to be open and completely honest about what they really think is going to happen, they could put today's forecast up with some degree of certainty that they'll be close to being accurate. They can somewhat safely say that today will be "cloudy with a high temperature of 35-ish." They can use the popular "look out the window" method of figuring this out, and chances are their forecast will be nearly on the money.
Tomorrow's forecast will be a little trickier, so they should be a little more vague: "A mix of clouds and sun. Highs between 10 and 50." And they should be a little more vague for each additional day they're pretending to forecast.
Once they get to a 10-day forecast, days 5-10 should really just have a big question mark graphic beside them. If they won't do that, they could have an honest forecast that says, "Some sun or clouds maybe, along with temperatures measured in Fahrenheit, along with the chance that there could be some sort of precipitation in the form of rain, snow, ice, hail or volcanic eruption."
But no, they can't be that honest, so I'll get my hopes up if I see a 10-day forecast with a sunny outlook, or I'll be grief-stricken with the rain forecast. I'd be much happier with a question mark.
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