Which is unreliable? The weather or its predicted reports

We love the thickening dark clouds with its thundering flashes of light and sound. It signifies rains. The thickened dark clouds usually empty its water vapour content on us as rains. Sometimes other things happen. The thick dark clouds will form, only to suddenly disappear and sunshine takes over in lieu of emptying the water-vapour content as rains. Raise your head and see the rough scattered white clouds above. Then, in the next thirty minutes thereabouts and you are likely to see the rough scattered white clouds beautifully smoothened out. The patterns lining up the sky keep changing as if someone is deliberately changing them. Likewise, on a typical sunny day and without the formation of the usual dark clouds that herald rains, it does rain. Can you guess why?

As you are ready to leave the house for work, it begins to rain. That means you have to arrive at work late. Lo and behold, you got to work just some 3km drive away only to realize that it never rained at the work place in the same area. Wow, we exclaimed. To paraphrase Steve Crown in his track, "You are great". We treble and praise and say you are great, oh God. We have all witnessed the above weather wonders. They amazed us. Who could make it rain in Madina but not at the Nkrumah Circle, all in Accra? Is the weather itself the source of these captivating wonders or these wonders are indicative of the invisible hands of God controlling the weather? Read on.

It is the behavior of this weather, full of wonders, that the meteorologists are supposed to predict for the public to tailor their daily activities. In the course of evening news, there is information for the public about how the weather would probably behave the next few days. The weather report read in wednesday evening news says that thursday will generally be sunny in your region. Yet when thursday comes, it rains in lieu of being sunny as predicted by the weather report. Never mind. The saturday evening news says sunday will be cloudy, hence we should expect rain. Sunday came and all was sunny, hot throughout. Is the meteorological department ill-equipped logistically as in instrumentation and resource personnel, we asked?

You see in a country where the people are yet to acculturate the importance of weather report from meteorologists into their daily activities with all the seriousness it deserves, unreliable predictions are the least we expect. Accordingly but unjustifiably, many do and even conclude that the weather reports from the department are untrustworthy. Therefore, Ghanaians rarely trust weather reports from the Meteorological Department. But, the main question to grapple with which never appear to many is, what is really unreliable; the weather or the predicted report? This question never bothered many because to them, God controls the weather.

THE DIFFICULTY IN PREDICTING THE WEATHER
Somewhere in 2006, professional and amateur astronomers thronged Ghana to have a clearer view of the predicted eclipse. We joined the visitors with our shades on to gaze the alignment of the heavenly bodies that always smacks the hell out of our forebears as something supernatural. This eclipse was predicted long ago and we were all eagerly anticipating the d-day (29th March 2006) until it came. It happened as predicted, and Ghana experienced almost a full dark cloud covering.
We watched the partial solar eclipse of November 2013 as well happened as predicted.

Why did the prediction not fail that day given it was predicted long ago? Well, the combined laws and equations of Newton and Kepler were enough to trail the motions of the heavenly bodies. Using these approximated laws and equations, models were devised through which we send satellites to space and predict eclipses far into the future. The satellites always reach their destinations. The predicted eclipses, even if predicted tens of years ahead do happen as predicted. Maybe, this is a sure sign that through science and mathematics, our species relatively understood the heavenly dynamics. It is the peak of the triumph (or is it illusion?) of traditional science that, understanding the laws of Nature empowers humanity to predict the behaviors of Nature. Interestingly we can predict eclipse, a rare heavenly cosmic event, yet find it extremely difficult to predict the weather accurately even for a day, let alone a week or month. Is the weather also not in motion like the planets? Read on.

THE WEATHER
Yes, it is in motion like the planets. But the dynamics are not exactly the same. The objects (planet and collection of gases) under discussion are different in terms of size. In dynamics or motion descriptions, the size of the objects matters. Hence the combined laws and equations of Newton and Kepler that worked "unreasonably effectively" in successfully predicting eclipse tens of years ahead are woefully inadequate when applied to the motion of the constituents making up the weather.
Worst, the weather is a combinatorial effect of the wind, temperature and pressure of the atmosphere at any instant in time.

The atmosphere is a collection of gases and dust particles that are in constant random motion. As the earth journeys round the sun in its rotation and revolutions, the motion of the gases defines the wind, temperature and pressure of the atmosphere. Because there are several ways for these large collections of gases to arrange themselves due to their random motions, the weather is hardly the same for any short time despite the constancy of seasons. The mathematical equations employed to describe it, underlying the possible model used in predicting, keep approaching but never zeroing in on its behavior in any appreciable approximations.

In other words, the weather is a complex chaotic system. A complex chaotic system is a system that is extremely sensitive to its conditions. It has the capacity and capability of self-organization. This means whatever happening anywhere within it potentially affects the entire system with different emergent actualizations at different places. This will explain why rough clouds that formed will suddenly disappear for sunshine to take over as the weather might be responding to perturbations somewhere faraway. The reason why patterns lining up the sky keep changing more quickly than you can keep abreast with. The same applies to why the dark clouds that is always indicative of rain will occasionally not empty its content as rain on us as a response to some disturbances. It will explain why it does rain suddenly even on sunny days without prior indications from the usual formation of dark clouds. In fact, it will explain why it can rain at your home but not your workplace in the same area some 5km away. The reason it will rain in Madina and not Nkrumah Circle, all in Accra. These are all responses by the weather to the least imaginable disturbances anywhere within it and its attendant cumulative effects somewhere.

In other words, the awe-inspiring wonders of the weather are due to its internally driven self-organization as continuous responses to the perturbations within it. It makes the weather inherently unpredictable. At best, it is predictably unpredictable. The unpredictability is not a hiding place for the visible or invisible hand of any God to control and wreck wonders with the weather. If it was ever true that God indeed controls the weather as the ancients believed and inherited by the typical religious, the Akosombo Dam would have been filled by now with the innumerable prayers to God to do so to offset the fall of water levels hampering our energy generation capacity. There was no answer and would never be not because of your (or is it our?) sins, unbelief and unfaithfulness (the usual superstitious excuses) but simply because God does not control the weather. The weather controls itself via its own self-organization.

The superstitious belief that God controls the weather resulted in some people blaming the usual unacceptable behavior of others religiously called sin as being responsible for the continuous absence of rains in some villages and communities. Our sins are so powerful that they do prevent God from making it rain on us as well as on our farms for better bountiful harvest. Superstition is always interesting. In addition to that, others believed that some human beings have supernatural powers to prevent the thickened dark clouds from ever emptying its water-vapour content as rains. That is these people could and do change the dark thick clouds. In fact, if they can change clouds from making it rain, they could make it rain as well. Just that, do not ask why no one bus them to Akosombo Dam to fill it? Today, we do not know all. Yet we know better.

CONCLUSION
To the question, which is unreliable; the weather or the report from the Meteorological Department, it is the weather, and not the report. The weather is "unreliable" in the sense that it is a complex chaotic system. It is very sensitive to its own conditions born of the unpredictable dynamics of its makeup. Yet the weather reports from the Meteorological department are sometimes correct even if coincidentally. Therefore, Ghanaians can still trust the reports from the meteorological department despite the occasional or "routine" mis-predictions. Even in advanced nations with all their state-of-the-art equipments, the mis-predictions are as common as the predictions. This is simply because the uncertainties are the certainties of the weather and all complex chaotic systems. It is non-linear, non-deterministic, and as such described with such equations. The linear and deterministic cause and effect do not follow as common sense and traditional science told us. Minor changes in the weather somewhere could wreck untold consequences somewhere.

In fact, to paraphrase the Experts in Complex Chaotic Systems with their famous Butterfly effect, when a butterfly in Aflao flaps its wings, the Flagstaff House in Accra can be flooded as the weather responds to this perturbation introduced by the butterfly. That is impossible for any meteorological department to predict. So contrary to traditional science of knowing the laws of nature to predicting its behavior, the modern science is clear, that, even if man could know the laws of Nature, it will be extremely difficult if not impossible to predict Nature's behavior as the weather demonstrate. Therefore, the best every Mayor of any city does in collaboration with the citizenry is to rely on the Meteorological reports, create free highway for water bodies and more importantly, oiling the machinery of the response teams by equipping them to accommodate the intrinsic unpredictable uncertainties of the weather.