July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Forecast doesn't inspire trust
Back in the Saddle
Will I ever trust a weather forecast again?
About 10 days ago, my wife and I had a great idea.
Summer was winding down all too quickly. “Like an unplugged fan” is how Loudon Wainwright put it in a song that always runs through my head this time of year.
Was there time for one more baseball game?
The Portland Rockets had finished their season and post-season play, so that was out of the question. The Fort Wayne TinCaps schedule wasn’t meshing well with ours, and we’ve found that games sell out quickly this time of year.
I looked at a Labor Day game between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati that seemed promising. The Reds have been amazing this season, and Pittsburgh has been an on-again/off-again contender for a wild card spot in the playoffs.
Then my wife suggested that I check indyindians.com. Sure enough, the Indians had a game scheduled on Saturday evening of Labor Day weekend.
A flurry of emails followed, and we’d soon set up the last baseball outing of the summer. I bought four tickets together. Sally would make the trip up from Bloomington, and her boyfriend Ben, who is teaching in Indianapolis, would join us.
To top it off, I found a not-too-expensive hotel room close to Victory Field.
The perfect plan: Baseball with the kids, a night in the big city, a chance to see Ben’s apartment, then on Sunday we’d visit the outdoor sculpture garden at the Indianapolis Museum of Art that we’d read so much about.
Perfect. Except for Isaac.
Less than 48 hours after setting things in motion, we began to track the course of the hurricane/tropical storm/summer troublemaker from the Gulf up to the Ohio River Valley.
By last Thursday, we were both watching the weather forecasts closely.
“Only a 60 percent chance of rain,” I’d say.
“But it’s supposed to be 2 to 5 inches,” my wife would respond.
And on it went Thursday afternoon, Thursday night, and Friday morning.
Finally, at lunchtime Friday, I pulled the plug, canceling the hotel reservation. Fortunately, I got a full refund. Not so with the Indians tickets. Those, I was stuck with. My only hope was that the game would be rained out.
So I kept watching The Weather Channel and kept clicking on the radar map on my computer. Isaac, I was assured, was on his way. Saturday would be soggy. Sunday would be worse. The flooding potential was serious. Clearly, it was not a weekend to be traveling.
The threat was so palpable that Friday afternoon I urged newsroom employees to make sure they took cameras home in case we had local flooding to report in the post-Labor Day paper.
And so, it sprinkled.
Though the humidity was dreadful, it wasn’t until about 7 p.m. Sunday that we actually received some meaningful rain locally.
Indianapolis had more, but it was just enough to cause a brief delay for Saturday night’s game. There will be no rain checks coming. Four empty seats are now on my Visa bill.
Maybe there’s some way I can get The Weather Channel to pick up the tab.[[In-content Ad]]
About 10 days ago, my wife and I had a great idea.
Summer was winding down all too quickly. “Like an unplugged fan” is how Loudon Wainwright put it in a song that always runs through my head this time of year.
Was there time for one more baseball game?
The Portland Rockets had finished their season and post-season play, so that was out of the question. The Fort Wayne TinCaps schedule wasn’t meshing well with ours, and we’ve found that games sell out quickly this time of year.
I looked at a Labor Day game between Pittsburgh and Cincinnati that seemed promising. The Reds have been amazing this season, and Pittsburgh has been an on-again/off-again contender for a wild card spot in the playoffs.
Then my wife suggested that I check indyindians.com. Sure enough, the Indians had a game scheduled on Saturday evening of Labor Day weekend.
A flurry of emails followed, and we’d soon set up the last baseball outing of the summer. I bought four tickets together. Sally would make the trip up from Bloomington, and her boyfriend Ben, who is teaching in Indianapolis, would join us.
To top it off, I found a not-too-expensive hotel room close to Victory Field.
The perfect plan: Baseball with the kids, a night in the big city, a chance to see Ben’s apartment, then on Sunday we’d visit the outdoor sculpture garden at the Indianapolis Museum of Art that we’d read so much about.
Perfect. Except for Isaac.
Less than 48 hours after setting things in motion, we began to track the course of the hurricane/tropical storm/summer troublemaker from the Gulf up to the Ohio River Valley.
By last Thursday, we were both watching the weather forecasts closely.
“Only a 60 percent chance of rain,” I’d say.
“But it’s supposed to be 2 to 5 inches,” my wife would respond.
And on it went Thursday afternoon, Thursday night, and Friday morning.
Finally, at lunchtime Friday, I pulled the plug, canceling the hotel reservation. Fortunately, I got a full refund. Not so with the Indians tickets. Those, I was stuck with. My only hope was that the game would be rained out.
So I kept watching The Weather Channel and kept clicking on the radar map on my computer. Isaac, I was assured, was on his way. Saturday would be soggy. Sunday would be worse. The flooding potential was serious. Clearly, it was not a weekend to be traveling.
The threat was so palpable that Friday afternoon I urged newsroom employees to make sure they took cameras home in case we had local flooding to report in the post-Labor Day paper.
And so, it sprinkled.
Though the humidity was dreadful, it wasn’t until about 7 p.m. Sunday that we actually received some meaningful rain locally.
Indianapolis had more, but it was just enough to cause a brief delay for Saturday night’s game. There will be no rain checks coming. Four empty seats are now on my Visa bill.
Maybe there’s some way I can get The Weather Channel to pick up the tab.[[In-content Ad]]
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