In defense of "dull and dreary"

A literary review of weather forecasts

For a few years, our thermostat app included a weather feature. You could tap on it and get a simple five-day forecast. It was my very favorite place to look at the weather, because it consisted of five short paragraphs, one for each day, describing the weather. Those paragraphs were clearly written by someone and by ‘someone’ I mean an actual human being. That actual human being had very strong opinions about the weather.

I would take pictures of the forecasts and post them on Instagram because I loved them so much. They said things like, “Partly sunny and beautiful.” Or the more measured, “Partly sunny and nice.” On one September day, “Cooler with some sun; a great start to fall.” Just for variety, they’d sometimes throw in, “Rather cloudy and remaining warm.” And my all-time favorite for its straight-up grumpiness—“Dull and dreary.” Reading those forecasts still makes me smile, three years later.

Then the HVAC people came and scoffed at our “outdated” thermostat and swapped it out for something new. The weather feature disappeared. My life was the tiniest bit sadder for its loss.

I was thinking about that old weather app last week as I’ve been looking at the “newly redesigned” Weather Channel app on my iPhone. I am a Midwesterner, so I look at the weather app a lot and especially this week as I’ve been waiting ever so patiently for actual fall temperatures to appear. My husband and I walked to the library this weekend and I thought I was going to pass out in the almost 90-degree humidity. I wouldn’t much blink at walking in that sort of weather in July or August, but I firmly believe that in September, my body is over it. My mind is over it. I am over it. It’s time to turn the air conditioning off.

What I noticed about the “newly redesigned” weather app was how much it sucks. They added text descriptions for each daily forecast, but the text descriptions are really, really bad. Last week they mostly read, “Today’s highs will be similar to yesterday.” How is that useful information?

The infamous “dull and dreary” forecast.

First, it’s only helpful if I know what yesterday’s highs were. Second, the app was, quite simply, wrong. Of course, as a habitual weather-checker, I do know what yesterday’s high was. If the high on Monday was 85 and the high on Tuesday was 89, the app would still inform me, “Today’s highs will be similar to yesterday.” Really? Are you sure? Because in my human-type world as a creature with an actual body that experiences things like air and sunshine, there’s a big difference between 85 and 89. The word ‘similar’ doesn’t mean what you think it means.

Still, this is what the daily forecast read day after day. Sometimes it was sadly truthful. A high of 89 is, in fact, similar to a high of 90. Those days are equally uncomfortable. I guess it’s hard to come up with catchy descriptions of a heat wave in September, but throw me a bone. Maybe it could read, “Still unseasonably warm.” Is that too much to ask?

Then, after a week straight of temps in the high 80s and low 90s, we got a day in the low 80s. Big opportunity for the weather writer, yes? The forecast for that day read, “Partly cloudy early. Thunderstorms developing this afternoon. Very warm. High 83F.”

What. The. Fuck. After six days of 89 and 90, 83 is not, in fact very warm. 83 is much cooler. 83 is perhaps I could actually sit outside in the middle of the day for a few moments. 89 is not. Is the person who writes these descriptions on acid? Or, much more likely, are these descriptions not being written by a person at all? I couldn’t find confirmation, but I highly suspect that the text descriptions are being written by artificial intelligence.

And okay, so AI needs better parameters for what feels like “similar” weather to actual human beings. That’s fixable. A slight adjustment of the proper parameters.

But the problem goes deeper than that. The problem is that AI doesn’t understand what it’s like to be a human being with a very subjective experience of weather. AI doesn’t understand that telling someone the weather is about constructing a narrative. The first day the temperature climbs above 60 degrees in March—that is a warm day. The first day the high is in the 60s in September (or now October, I guess)? That is a cool day. Temperature exactly the same. Subjective experience very different.

Weather is subjective. The person writing the forecasts in my old app made no effort to disguise their total disdain for rainy, cloudy days. They’re “dull and dreary.” I don’t agree. I like a rainy day. But that description, “dull and dreary,” tells me more about the weather than, “Today’s highs will be similar to yesterday.”

This one especially pisses me off. Like, I feel like I’m being chastised for expecting blue skies? Or is it supposed to be funny? It’s not. It’s off. It sucks.

Part of what I loved about those old forecasts was that it was impossible not know that they had been written by an actual human being. They had definite opinions about the difference between a day that was “sunny and nice” and a day that was “sunny and beautiful.” They did not like rain. They had a sense of what would make the perfect weather for the start of fall. They used words like “rather.” Maybe they were British.

I liked those forecasts because there was a human on the other end who didn’t experience weather exactly the same way I did but who did at least experience actual weather. That person had felt rain on their skin. Or the chill of a cold that is also damp. They’d felt the sun beating down on their body with no shade in sight.

When I read those forecasts, I was connecting with another human being. I imagined them somewhere, reading the forecast and deciding how to describe it. Debating over the difference between “nice” and “beautiful.” Feeling the same sort of delight we all do at the first cool day of fall. Being in a funk and saying fuck it. Tomorrow is “dull and dreary.” Why pull any punches? Call it like it is.

Even in writing that is mostly inconsequential, I like knowing there is a human on the other end. I feel the same way about written instructions for assembling furniture. Why did they describe it that way, I think to myself. And who did the translation into English? All writing, even in its most basic form, is a communication between two human beings and some of that humanness inevitably comes through. Unless it’s not a human being. Then I don’t know what writing is. Except that it’s so much less helpful and never as interesting.

I actually got some questions for my Ask a Sociologist feature. Didn’t expect that! The questions were great and I’m mulling them over, working on answers, so stay tuned…