Survey: Who Should Be Our Weather-Forecaster?

SpinDizzy doesn’t have any groundhogs or woodchucks as far as I can tell, so I asked people who they figured should be our weather forecasting animal instead.

Austin said, “Obviously, the thing to do is follow the Cohanzick Zoo and rely on coatis to forecast the end of winter. The Cohanzick Zoo, in southern Jersey, uses the reactions of a trio of coatis to forecast the winter.” Why them? Because, he said, “They’ve got a couple coatis. And this lets them give the coatis fruits and stuff, which people ought to be doing more of anyway.”

Azure pointed at Amethyst, and said “I think we should use her to forecast the end of winter.” He explained that because of her ability to interface with computers we could “Just ask her to sneak into Jack Frost’s house– or the Weather Control Computer, whicever you prefer, like a ninja and in the former case read his day planner, and in the latter case read the script,” which she said she could do if someone told her where Jack Frost lives. Azure said he knew where the Weather Control Computer lives, and that “If we wanted to know where Jack Frost lived, why, we’d have to find Santa Claus and steal his address book, or at least take a quick peek at it.  Because the last time I talked to Santa Claus he kept saying various things were classified.”

But Amethyst said, “We could just use a calendar. You don’t have it just tell you when winter is going to end. If you want that, just watch a news channel and wait for the weather forecast.” She said having an animal predict it was “so inaccurate. We have instruments that do if far more effectively, Technological, magical, or otherwise.”

Dragoncat suggested “we could run a job listing. […] We’d need someone who was well versed in predicting long term weather, and to be cute! And a gimick would be nice!” He thought he could maybe try it, “if people didn’t get mad for inaccuracies.”

And then he thought to ask Darius if he’d want to be an “End of Winter” mascot, saying, “You have the cuteness! All we need to do is find you some kind of gimick! Darius finds his shadow, and we have an early spring! Or is that a late spring?” Or maybe instead, “If Claude comes out of the ceiling, and sees you checking up on the weather, then we get extra winter!” Claude said, “That could work!”

Kefan said, “A professional meteorologist,” though he didn’t know any on SpinDizzy. Amethyst said she did, “the ones on two of the major Neopolis news channels. It’s not hard to be a meteorologist when the weather is more or less set in stone.  Or… silicone, as it stands.”

Amethyst finally suggested Clair though, “Because she has the resources to reliably predict the weather, through both her own sensors and her connections to the SpinDizzy weather mainframe.” She explained that Clair “stuffed a smartphone in her gut and uses that.” So “if you really insist on having an animal predict the seasons, it may as well be a mechanical one with a supercomputer for a brain.”

fluffy asked if we have any living weather balloons, but nobody could think of any. “Or maybe instead of predicting the weather we could create all new weather. With SCIENCE. And why stick with boring old snow? We could have a torrent of lemon drops or something. On Sunday we could have a gentle misting of gummy bees.”

Jake said, “Maybe we should have the kangaroo-rats predict the weather.” He didn’t think he was good at it himself, but said, “I’m not the only kangaroo-rat around.”

Chaos said, “How about skunks?” I asked why them and he said, “Well, you don’t see many skunks around, so why not skunks? Of course I could have said ‘myself’.” He didn’t really like doing the weather though, and said, “I’d be having the weather changing every which way. Best not to put me in charge of the weather. Rain, snow, rain again, humid, snow. Oooo: am getting ideas. Maybe six feet of snow? Oooo, that would be fun. Glad that I am a dragon.”

Kandra suggested “Polar bears,” figuring that Borris could be pretty groundhog-like, “especially with how he grumbles about weather.”

But Kandra also wondered, “What if a groundhog actually shows up sometime in the future and gets all offended?” Even if it wouldn’t be reasonable getting upset because we did something when they weren’t even here, “some people can be pretty unreasonable. I mean, just look at Morticon.” She also thought if she were going to do weather, “I’d maybe be tempted to invert the seasons with respect to Earth-That-Was. So when it was summer there, it would be the dead of winter here, and vice versa. Or maybe we could have chaos. With different places different seasons in different times.”

‘Kamare said, “I’d make it snow all the time, if I were in charge. I like snow,” which isn’t exactly an answer except if she was going to be the weather-predicting animal.

Azure thought some more about it the next time I was asking people and that next time said, “Obviously we need to make the weather alive so we can just ask it what its plans are for the immediate future.” But he didn’t mean like air and water elementals because, “I’m not some poxy prestidigitator! [I mean] trying to see if we can extract a mind from or inspire one in the atmosphere.” That’s different from an elemental because “It’s not conventionally magical, and I’m not all that fond of conventional magic.” Even fairies I asked? “Well, let me rephrase. I’m fond of other people who use it, I just try to avoid it myself.”

Askric Drendleburg, who’s new, asked, “Do you want [forecasting] accurate or good for gambling? Not to slight good weather prediction models, but they make for a dreadfully boring thing to place bets on.”

Nova said, “I’m not really sure who would be best for that actually. Sorry. Perhaps Natasha though,” and Natasha thought some about how she could be a weather balloon if she really tried.

Borris said he did know when it will snow, because “my right knee will hurt. Old injury. Is why [I] left army and joined circus.” Azure suggested that Borris “certainly could yell ‘SNOW!’ at the top of his lungs. Then hit something.”