Many times, I plan my daily outside activities based on forecasts by local TV meteorologists. They all claim to be 80 percent correct on their predictions.

Because I live in Scarborough, I would like to get accurate weather predictions for the Portland area. The local TV stations give forecasts for an area from Wells to Brunswick.

Over the years, and in my opinion, I would say that the local TV forecasters are wrong about 80 percent of the time. They have all the latest computer equipment and claim to be able to predict weather, predict storms, rainfall amounts, temperatures, etc.

Today, for instance, they predicted heavy rain, strong wind, thunderstorms and a possibility of hail and a tornado. What did we get here in Scarborough? We got a quarter-inch of rain (according to the rain gauge), little to no wind and thunderstorms that were mostly north of Portland.

My advice to our local weather prognosticators would be the following: Get your nose out of the computer, open a window and actually look outside at the weather. Farmers have a better sense of the weather than these educated weather dimwits. In essence, local TV meteorologists get paid for being wrong. Finally, break down the weather predictions to localized areas, i.e. York County weather, Cumberland County weather, Kennebec County weather, including coastal weather forecasts for each county.

Wayne Tanguay
Scarborough

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