As I write this column Friday morning a little bit north of New York City, we're under the gun of an early-season snow storm that threatens to dump a foot of snow on us between this afternoon and
Sunday morning.
One of the things I've always loved about the Internet is its ability to track the weather, something you couldn't do as early as 10 years ago unless you watched The Weather
Channel nonstop or built a Doppler radar in your backyard. It's made tracking hurricanes easier. You can instantly check conditions - it's 27 degrees at the airport about five miles from my home
and 12 degrees in Caribou, Maine - and you can see almost instantaneous radar anywhere in the country.
You don't have to wait 10 minutes for The Weather Channel nor for the 6 p.m. local
news. That's a big deal for us weather geeks. This morning, I've watched the line of white move from Pennsylvania through New Jersey toward New York. I know that it's already snowing where my
grandparents live - about two hours away - but it hasn't started yet where my dad lives, two hours in the other direction. The radar helps me on other days too, most notably when I'm trying to time
my dash from the office to the subway in the afternoon.
That may sound stupid - just look out the window - but you've probably never been caught in a Manhattan downpour then, have you? And
that's the beauty of the Internet: Getting the information you want, when you want it. When I started on the Internet with Gopher in 1992, I found Weather Underground and a few academic sites that
served me well. Now I use a few commercial weather sites as well and they're terrific.
Not that there's anything wrong with listening to the radio or watching TV. When you're on the Web,
there isn't the subjectivity that the broadcast media offers. You don't get a sense of someone talking directly to you, telling you what to expect and when. You're not provided the local flavor
that a radio or TV reporter can give you from all around your region. I still can't get used to getting storm closings over the Web rather than the radio. And the Web doesn't accurately translate a
human feature of winter weather: The gloom-and-doom that famously sends people to the grocery store for milk, eggs and bread, for fear of getting snowed under.
On second thought, that's a
great reason to stick to the Internet for weather information.
--Paul J. Gough