I'm Just 31,114 out of 300 Billion

By: Dan Bickford | News Channel 7
Published: June 24, 2009 | 0 Comments | Post a Comment

The National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, CO has just put out results from a survey…indicating that the average American adult is checking a weather forecast over three times a day. The number is actually 3.8, but checking eight-tenths of a forecast is hard to track…

They do the math and figure that with an adult population of about 226 million, close to 300 billion forecasts are used by Americans annually.

Which got me thinking…what am I providing to the cause?

Let’s see, in a typical day (no severe weather resulting in more frequent weather updates): sixteen different weather segments on Daybreak from 5 am to 7 am, another sixteen from 7 am to 9 am on Your CW, four local news cut-ins during the CBS Early Show, four weather cut-ins during the same show, one noon newscast, two updates to our website, and one recorded phone forecast. Wait, there’s our 24/7 weather channel. Four recorded weather segments run every half hour, and I’ll be up there for approximately eleven hours a day. That’s 132 opportunities a day that someone can receive weather from me alone!

Why stop there? Five days a week, fifty two weeks a year, but there’s vacation time and holidays and sick days or conferences I may be at… so let’s round down to 47 weeks. Wait…also sending out some newspaper forecasts twice a week. So there’s another 94 forecasts, plus about 235 working days a year…times 132 forecast opportunities a day...my math works out to about 31,114 distinct times I give some weather information. Not counting extra updates, phone calls, etc.

Out of 300 billion received.

I’ll admit, I’m not double-checking my math or my head might explode, but that means I could have given about .0000001037 of the total forecasts received. Give or take a fraction.

I'm not sure if I'm happy or insignificant...