Sixteen Inches

“What do the scientists know?” Ari greeted me in the morning with a triumphant smile. “All the technology in the world, all the atheists with all their machines, and nothing. They can’t even predict the weather.”

I looked out the window. I have to defend my fellow atheists, I thought. Silently I pleaded, “Please God, make some snow appear.”

They predicted snow, plenty of it. I spent the entire previous day arranging rides for our employees, only to cancel most of them; no need to come in at all, we’d told them. We messed up, I realized in the morning. The kids were getting ready for cheider and school. No school closures were announced, their sullen faces showed their dismay. So did mine. I know that Ari will use it to beat me. Again. Ari, or Shimi, or Yoily, or anyone.

I drove in listening to the weather. “Traffic and Weather together on the 10’s only at 1010 WINS,” followed by “Traffic and Transit on the 8’s, but first the weather…” By then it was clear that we weren’t going to get sixteen inches. But we might still get twelve, that wouldn’t be too bad. I can still win, I thought. The front wiper scratched the window, but I didn’t shut it off. I was clinging to each falling snow flake as my savior, my personal snowstorm. I needed it.

There was a film of snow about an inch thick when I looked out the window again. The weather was clearly nasty, but for this they didn’t have to shut down the entire city. It isn’t the first time the meteorologists got it wrong – it’s a cliché for a reason. But to mess up that badly?

Back in the warmth of the office I had to shrug off my workmates. “They said it will snow during the day, let’s give it some time.” It was hard to concentrate at work when so much was at stake.

By lunchtime a respectable amount had fallen. “It’s at least five inches,” I told them. They made me go out in the cold and measure it. I won’t lie, it was barely three inches.

I stayed up late looking out the window, hoping for something to give me a victory the next morning. They had already scaled down the predictions to seven inches. My tape measure was showing barely six. I might still win, I thought, even seven is closer than nothing. Or I’d say we both won.

Or I should say we both lost. What was I defending? What is their position? That science isn’t accurate? I should have tried to explain that scientific predictions aren’t said to be foolproof. How meteorologists know their limits and try only to tell us what they do know. The predictors, those who made the whole fuss, gave it a percentage of accuracy. It wasn’t 100%. They knew it might be less, they know the limitations of their equipment. They also know how far we have came from the days when we used superstition to predict the weather. Somewhere, someone is working to make the technology more accurate, and we may possibly achieve that one day. “Science works,” I should have told them, “because each and every one of you used science to get to work today.”

I should have understood their mindset too. To them science is the antithesis of religion. The opposing view must have the same degree of certainty, the same quality of infallibility, as religion. Religion’s infallibility is certified, of course, because :“zehst doch, zei veisen goornisht.” And thus, with this circular logic, religion continues.

Instead I spent a whole day praying to their God for a bissele shnei. I thought He’d like the fact that I was pleading in Yiddish. I hoped He’d find it cute.

Tags: meteorology, religion, science, snow, weather