People notice one type of mistake—the failure to predict rain—more than another kind, false alarms. If it rains when it isn’t supposed to, they curse the weatherman for ruining their picnic, whereas an unexpectedly sunny day is taken as a serendipitous bonus. It isn’t good science, but as Dr. Rose at the Weather Channel acknowledged to me: “If the forecast was objective, if it has zero bias in precipitation, we’d probably be in trouble.”
