Met-O-Meters?

A couple of TV stations in Atlanta have decided it’s necessary to let their viewers know what the weather is going to be like in coming days by “grading” them with a number between 1 and 10 or 1 and 11. (Why 11? Beats me.)

I know I’m a grumpy old man (about 8 on a scale of 10), but such “Met-O-Meters” are subjective, silly and gimmicky. Let me decide whether today is a 2 or a 10. After all, one man’s 10 is another man’s 4.

For instance, a sunny, sizzling day on the beach might rate a 10 if you’ve got an umbrella (UM-brella in the South), make frequent dashes into the surf and have a bucket full of cold brewskies next to you. But to a golfer a few miles away with sweat pouring into his eyes and in danger of dehydrating, such conditions might deserve only a 4.

Or how about a chilly Christmas morning with a touch of fresh snow on the ground–a scene right out of Currier & Ives? Throw another log on the fire, Ma. And how about a hot mug of cinnamon coffee? A good old-fashioned holiday morn like that could be worth a 10. Unless, of course, you have to drive in it or are worried about the soaring cost of heating. Then it’s a–oh, I don’t know–5 or something. (Like I said, it’s entirely subjective.)

Consider a drought-breaking rain. To a farmer facing wilting crops or a greenskeeper battling spreading brown patches, a downpour could warrant a solid 10. To a kid whose baseball game is rained out or a mom whose tennis match is washed away, it’s a 2. Or a 3. Or a 4.

What’s next? News-O-Meters? Today’s news is a 4 on our exclusive Headline Hypometer! (Believe me, it ain’t never gonna be a 10.) Oops. Hope I haven’t given TV stations an idea… a really bad idea. The big danger here is that if one channel does this, the rest of them follow like sheep.

The bottom line: just give me the weather info; I’ll do my own Bo Derrick-scaling, thank you. How do you feel about Met-O-Meters?

And on a follow-up topic, I’m now 200 pages into The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. It still seems a bit plodding, with way too much back-story on the characters. I find myself skipping entire pages at a time. Not a good sign. Still, the quality of the writing and the promise of a good story have kept me going.