Column Classic: It’s Not The Heat

By Lisa Scottoline

Hot enough for ya?

That’s right.  I like to talk about the weather.  More accurately, I’m fascinated by the weather.  We begin where I begin every day, on weather.com.

For me, weather.com is online porn.

I don’t know if it’s because I’m in the middle of writing a book, and I’m not sure where the plot is going or what the characters will do, but I love that if I log onto weather.com, I get answers. 

Answers, answers, and more answers.  

I click to weather.com, then click again to Hourly, to break down the weather for the coming day, complete with adorable pictures of shiny suns or thumbnail thunderbolts.  At a glance, first thing in the morning, I can find out that it will be 92 degrees at 11:15 a.m. today. 

Wow! 

Where else can you get someone to foretell your future, humidity index included?    

Come to think of it, that’s what I love most about weather.com.  It can tell all sorts of information about the future with precision, and I want to know everything I can about the future, especially if it includes when my hair will frizz.

For example, once I find out that the sunshine today will morph to light rain at 3:17 p.m., I click over to the Mosquito Index.  Yes, on weather.com, you can click to find out when you’re most likely to get bitten by a mosquito, which turns out to be between 5:06 p.m. and 6:37 a.m., tomorrow morning.  And tonight, if you want to know, the Mosquito Activity will be between None and Limited, as opposed to the top of the scale, which is Very High.  You don’t want to plan your picnic for when the mosquitoes are at their worst, which is Really Frigging Annoying.

And on the Mosquito Index page, there’s even a sidebar asking, Want To Know When The Fish Are Biting?

And suddenly, I do! 

I want to know when the fish are biting, even though I don’t fish.  In fact, I didn’t even know they bite.

I click my way to the Fishing Forecast, where you can search by zip code or by lake, and this astounds me.  Weather.com can tell you when the fish will be biting in a particular lake? 

How great is that? 

It bodes well for our country, if we can foretell when fish will be biting in Lake Whatever, and at what time.  If we can do that, we can put a man on the moon. 

Or back on the moon. 

Or at least make my hair not frizz.

The first lake that pops into my mind is Lake Winnipesaukee, because it’s mentioned in a movie I love, What About Bob?  Of course, Lake Winnipesaukee is impossible to spell, which is a joke in the movie, so to get the right spelling, I have to navigate to google.com, where I plug in the wrong spelling and it asks me, DID YOU MEAN….and supplies the right spelling.

Yes, Google, I did mean that.  What you said.  Thanks for saving my face, online.  Google.com is almost as smart as weather.com.  It can’t tell the future, but it can read your mind.   

Anyway, I go back to the Fishing Forecast, plug Lake Winnipesaukee into the lake search, and am rewarded with a multicolored wiggly line showing that today, the Lake Winnipesaukee fish will be biting the most between 12:01 p.m. and 2:06 p.m.

Ouch. 

If I were you, I’d stay away.

And the same webpage also informs me that the Moon Phase tonight will be Waxing Gibbous.

See? Toldja!  Answers, answers, and more answers.   

I’m so happy to know this about the moon, though I have no idea what Waxing Gibbous means.  I could find out, but I don’t need to to marvel at how great it is to know it, precisely. 

And I’m not talking about horoscope-level precision.  I’m talking, real, no-joke, scientific-type precision.  In my experience, weather.com is never wrong.  Or if it’s wrong, it changes its forecast right away, which is still kosher. 

Politicians do it all the time.

Copyright © Lisa Scottoline