A cloud of dust from Windy Island billlows along the Mackenzie river in front of Tulita
The wind whipped across windy Island pulling up a plume of dust that carried down the MacKenzie river for half a mile. It looked like the dusty wake of some speeding boat. ”Looks like a change in the weather.” I said to Lina as she folded towels. She joined me at the window and glanced out at the huge cloud of dust swirling down the valley. “Wow it sure is windy.” She said as she closed the kitchen windows. I had learned, when I had arrived in Tulita that the elders could tell what the weather would do by watching what the wind did on Windy Island. I respect this. These people have depended on their ability to judge the weather for ten thousand years. On a river as big as the MacKenzie your life depends on it. I respect this and take counsel from their advice. I remember I once had an elder remark to me “Those guys on the radio, they always tell us what weather is coming. But we always get what comes.” He was right, of course. The amazing thing about most native elders is not the wisdom that they pass on, it is the understated and offhanded way they do it.
Now I am sure that there is a lot of science that goes into weather watching and prognostication. Satelite imaging, Dopler Radar, anomometers, barometers, thermometers and lots of other meters too. Kilometres of meters. But I also suspect that there is an equal measure of artistry that goes into predicting the weather. What I am saying is that someone, some subjective, suggestible, fallible human has to look at all the data and tell us gullible human beings what it all means. This is where the voodoo or flim flammery comes into it. I am by nature a bit of a skeptic. I resist believing in anything until I have given it a good mental hashing out. I am not alone. I have a cousin that I used to work with on his father’s farm. Now farmers are somewhat more tied to the weather than most. They work in it all day. “Make hay while the sun shines” is a lot more than some useless aphorism. To the farmer, especially in 1973 it was the law! No plastic marshmallows full of Haylage ( a corruption of the words hay and silage). Where the hay is baled green in giant bags. No big round bales that could be left in the fields either. We baled good honest square bales. We cut the hay in the sun and we raked, tedded and baled it in the sun. If rain, or worse, yech, fog should occur when the hay was down it would be ruined. Either the hay would bleach and lose all its’ goodness or it would mildew and rot and brun your barn down. Serious stuff that gave more than one farmer grey hair. So this weather stuff was serious business.
Now a farmer’s life is one of routines. You rose before the sun, you put feed out for the cows. You brought in and milked said bovines. You cleaned your milkers and your barn and you turned bossie out into good pasture. In the summer days you made hay. Lots of hay. Then each night you did the routine all over again. Then you went to bed and prayed for sun. But before you tucked in you consulted the oracle. The sage. Like pilgrims at Delphi we surrounded the black and white console Zenith and watched the weather from Halifax. His name was Rube Hornstein. He was tall and thin with a good honest face. A useful trait in a weatherman. No day was complete until Rube had spoken. While his Father gave Rube a lot of weight, my cousin did not. “The only way to tell the weather by the TV is to put it outside. If it’s wet then it’s raining.” He was the ultimate skeptic.
Now poor Rube was telling weather before the greatest innovation in weather forecasting. What would that be you ask? Doppler? Satelite imaging? The blue screen? No way. The greatest revolution in all of forecasting was stolen from Astrology, Palmistry, Phrenology and Nostradamus his ownself. It is simple chicanery. The greatest invention in modern weather forecasting is the percentage chance of precipitation. Huh? No,seriously. Think about it. How do astrologers keep you coming back? They speak in such generalities that anything is possible. “You will meet someone interesting today.” Well when don’t you? “Be cautious with financial decisions.” Well when would that not be a good idea? The same was true of old Nostradamus. I once watched a TV show about Nostradamus and some guy in the garb of an Eastern Mystic was trying to spin one of old Nossie’s quatrains into the story of the rise of Adolf Hitler. He said that the rules of the quatrain allowed you to transpose every so many letters and to take the letter before or the letter after in the akphabet and make the word work. What a load of fertilizer! With rules like that I could be the greatest prognosticator in history. Nostradamus was a sham.
So too are these modern hocus-pocus purveyors of the “percentage pretense”. Allow me to explain. The forecast will say there is a 20% cahnce of rain right? So if it doesn’t rain they can say, “We told you so.” Because they said that there was an 80% chance it wouldn’t. If it does rain they can still say “I told you so.” Because they said there was a 20% chance that it might rain. See, they can’t be wrong. Flim-flammery of the highest order. “What’s that honey? Yeah I’ll bring in the clothes.” Well dear reader it is starting to rain so I must go. “Those guys on the radio, they always tell us what weather is coming. But we always get what comes.” Truer words…
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