Ok, who did the rain dance?? Weather forcast does not look too good for the weekend. Please, oh please let it change!!
OK, did a little checking. The weather channel online shows the forecast for East Ridge, TN as highs in the mid 70s all week long, Sunny to Partly Cloudy through Wednesday then "ISOLATED" thunderstorms Thursday, Friday, Saturday and showers on Sunday. If you look a little deeper, the chances are only 30% on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday before bumping up to 60% on Sunday. I think I had to explain this last year to keep people from freaking out about the terrible weather they had forecasted for last year (which, by the way, turned out to be one of the nicest weekends we ever had for Bug-A-Paluza).
OK, on any given day regardless of the forecast, it will either rain or it won't rain. So, on any given day, the chance of rain is 50% right?
OK, now how many days does it actually rain in this part of the country? Maybe on average 1 per week? To be sure, let's say 2 per week. So, on average, we have a 2 out of 7 chance it will rain. That works out to . . . let's see . . . :-k . . . 28.6%
Did I figure that right? I'm assuming I did. So, on any given day, the chance of rain is 50% but at most it rains 28.6% of those days making the true chance of rain 14.3% on any given day.
OK, now on the days it does rain, how often does it rain all day? Almost never! Halve the day? Maybe sometimes. Probably on average, the days it does rain it rains 1/3 of the day. Probably less, but let's not be overly optimistic here. So, on any given day the chance of rain is 14.3% but on the days it does rain, it's only going to rain 33.3% of the time. What does that work out to . . . Looks like by my calculations, 4.76%.
So, what does this tell us? On any given day, regardless of the time of year or the forecast, there is a 4.76% chance it's going to be raining when we step outside.
NOW, remember the forecast is only calling for a 30% chance of rain. So, that cuts the odds down by more than a third! And then take into account that these are "isolated" thunderstorms so even if it does rain, it might not be raining where you are. So, that cuts the odds it will rain on the show down to about part of 1 or 2 days out of a hundred. We've had a little rain on at least 2 show days in the past, so the odds are we will not have rain again until somewhere around Bug-A-Paluza 50 something. By that time the show will so big that we will have to move to the Georgia Dome and it won't matter if it rains.
That's my story and I'm sticking to it!
Disclaimer: I used to work with a statistician who used to say "torture the data long enough and it will tell you anything you want to hear."
:wink:
