Day #5: Where’s Sonny Eliot when we need him?*

As I write this, it is 7:37 p.m. and 83°. Thunderstorms are predicted to begin at 8 and last all night.

If the past few months are any indication, however, the forecast will change in about 30 minutes for no rain until four or five days from now.

Of all the really dumb things I can get irritable about, my obsession with how wrong the weather predictions this summer have been has to be at the top of the list. I know weather patterns aren’t in anyone’s control, so why does it bother me so much when meteorologists get it wrong?

Technology is better now than when I was growing up, but in my (likely flawed) memory, the “weatherman” got it right more than he got it wrong. That’s what i remember anyway. When he said it was going to rain, you’d better take an umbrella and wear your rain boots.

Maybe disappointed is a better descriptor than irritable. We need the rain. It’s been hot and dry, and the grass, the flowers and the crops are thirsty.

And also, I think it’s this larger question: Is there anyone I can trust?

The world feels like it’s going to hell in a handbasket, to use one of my favorite old expressions. It’s completely unpredictable. When I wake up in the morning, I never know what fresh hell has happened overnight, in this country or somewhere else in the world. When a politician speaks — I don’t care what party affiliation they have — these days I just assume they’re lying. Or exaggerating. Or misrepresenting. Or spinning. You, too?

So who can we rely on to tell it like it is? Who can we count on?

No one. Not even the weatherman, it seems. Or the “weather girl.”

Don’t even get me started on that one.

And by the way, it’s now 8:53 p.m. as I hit the publish button, and there’s not a rain cloud in the sky.

•https://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/2012/11/endearing_detroit_weatherman_s.html