HFO (Happiness and Fitness Online)

“The Weather in Our Lives”

At the time when I wet my forefinger to determine from where the breeze is coming from and dropped a blade of grass to approximate its speed, our weather bureau PAGASA (Philippine Astronomical and Geophysical Sciences Administration), flew helium-filled balloons to predict the weather. Their forecasts then were astronomically off not for the unpredictability of the weather but for the unpredictability of their supply of helium.

Then in the mid-80s, I was temporarily assigned to our corporate office In Middlebury, CT, U.S.A. and knew how the U.S. came to be so rich. My counterparts monitored the weather Wednesdays so they can go to rain-free places on the weekend. Mondays, they complain how short their wonderful week-end was. It’s how important the weather is to their lives.

Between these two time frames, our PAGASA remains a joke at worst, a subject of doubt at best. Not that they always miss the weather. They are accurate after the fact, seldom before. One time, the forecast was for our office to be affected by a storm right after lunch. But at 3 p.m., the sun was shining like a new-born babe so we stayed put. A little before 5 p.m., all hell broke loose and we had to go home in the middle of a storm.

Nowadays, because of their incalculable effects on the economy, countries have launched numerous satellites to improve weather forecasts to the level of near “zero defect.” A cab driver unafraid of computers can drop by any Internet café and check the weather for himself. Yet our PAGASA remains an office of miscreants appearing on TV only for two things – to forecast the weather which no one believes or to make excuses for another forecast gone haywire.

Under these circumstances, is it any wonder then that another ship lie upside down with 600 lives still unaccounted for and a load of chemicals waiting to seep its deadly contents into the surrounding seas? No and it will happen again and again for as long as we remain a country of excuses rather than solutions. It will happen again for as long as the country floats on an ocean of politics that turns everything it touches into dust.

In the height of the storm after the sinking of the Princess of the Stars, as in previous disasters, PAGASA kept on giving out muted excuses of “lack of equipment” for their disastrous performance. They keep on hinting of buying expensive radars to monitor and track weather conditions. Though noble at face value, the question that begs for an answer is this, “if they were not able to constantly fly their weather balloons for lack of helium, how long will these expensive radars operate until they break down for lack of spare parts?” Right after the last storm, the PAGASA people got in touch with a radio station to report on the weather from a borrowed telephone because their line was cut off for unpaid bills. If they cannot pay their telephone bills, how can they pay the maintenance costs of expensive radars they are hoping to buy? The only certainty from the purchase of weather radars is the kickback that derives from it.

Not that the lives of Filipinos are disastrously affected by the weather. There are thousands of other reasons that make our lives miserable. Besides, we have gotten used to it. We have gotten used to PAGASA ‘s regular prediction of “fair weather except for scattered rain showers or thunderstorms, “ or “the tail end of the cold front,” or the “tropical convergent zone.”

To regain bruised ego and lost credibility, every now and then PAGASA would forewarn the public of 20 or so storms within the year giving us the impression that they are on top of the situation when in fact, a guy ignorant on statistics, will know that this knowledge comes not from careful analysis of weather and atmospheric data from all over the world but from annual averages of typhoons visiting the country in the past.

And they can seem to be erudite too. When a long dry spell occurs, we have the El Nino, and if rains fall on months they are not supposed to, we have the El Nina. Now if only people will bother to surf the Net to find out what these atmospheric phenomena are, they will know that PAGASA is, once again, off in its prediction

This entry was posted on Monday, July 14th, 2008 at 12Mon, 14 Jul 2008 12:12:05 +0000:07127 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.