How’s the weather?

Call it small talk if you want, but I’m going to call it fake news.

Recently I’ve found that if you ask “what’s the weather going to do?”, the answer will be followed with “....or so they say.”

Why? Because with all the technology we have at our fingertips in the first quarter of the 21st century, it seems weather apps on our phones uniquely apply different laws of physics to their forecasting.

As in, all of them use a different metric, and I’m guessing it’s some version of the Magic Eight Ball from my youth.

I began conducting my own at-home experiment about a year ago when I was standing in my garage and while I was watching an unforecasted monsoon blow through.

I checked the weather app that came with my phone - which I mistakenly thought was synced with reality – and it said the sun was shining and that rain I saw was an alternate fact.

My husband’s weather app, which is different than mine because he has an android, said there was a 30% chance of rain, but nothing yet.

That day I downloaded a second weather app on my iPhone and it’s been on ever since. I check them both every day, and for the record they disagree on something every. single. day.

It might be the temperature, the wind, humidity or whether or not that’s snow or hail I’m seeing, but those weather apps refuse to hold hands and sing Kumbaya together.

The past few weeks have seen some crazy weather here in North Texas – high temperatures, low temperatures, thunderstorms, tornadoes in the area, surprise hailstorms - you know the drill if you’ve lived here longer than a month.

It was during one of those weather events on a weekend when no meterologists were on staff at the local news stations that it looked like things could get hairy, so I turned to my weather apps.

That’s when I saw a first.

There was a huge question mark, literally, on current conditions on one of my apps.

I admired the honesty, but what? That weather app was telling me straight up, “look, I have no idea what’s going on and I’m not going to guess.” It felt like the collective weather authority in my life all just shrugged their shoulders and danced off to “Que Sera, Sera.”

I’m going to make my own weather prediction for this summer. It’s Texas, it’s going to be hot a lot, and there will probably be tornadoes and threats of hail. Oh, and did I mention the wind? So much of that, too. Or so I say.