Continuing problems with my Cabal Internet connection has made posting sometimes difficult lately... in the 'passing a camel through the eye of a needle' kind of difficult. Fortunately, I have had plenty of neglected Real Life issues to deal with, helping to keep my will to live down to a manageable level. But right now, it's almost 80 degrees at Wendell Castle in the mini-outskirts of San Luis Obispo, Californium, which means at least 7 to 8 degrees warmer inside Wendell Castle. I have yet to figure out exactly what this building is made out of, but I suspect Global Warming could be delayed by several years if they tore it down. Unfortunately, I have 6 months left on my current lease.

Anyway, here I am, baking in the Central California Sun and, in an act of certified masochism, web surfing on a hot laptop, keeping my lap warm enough to guarantee my sterility for the next year, and I come across this little graphic from Weather.com:
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I decide to go to Weather.com's latest Web2.0WidgetGadgetBellAndWhistleDogAndPony feature, its Interactive Weather Map and it confirms what I've seen with my own eyes.
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So why did Weather.com do this? Were they paid off by some envious East Coasters? Has the Weather Channel been acquired by NewsCorp, thus making their definition of 'weather' as unrelated to reality as their definition of 'news'? Or did some dude at the official SLO Weather Station spill his Mountain Dew into the rain gauge?

This calls for some Citizen Journalism. I'm going to remove the hot laptop from my warm lap and go out and investigate. Be back soon.

Wait, you're tellin me the weather report was wrong? My world is shattered.

It wasn't just a wrong forecast... it was a totally wrong WHAT'S HAPPENING AT THIS EXACT FREAKING MOMENT! And between the unnatural heat of Wendell Castle and the hot laptop on my warm lap, LIGHT RAIN was just some kind of a cruel cruel joke!

Anyway, my attention span has moved on. I'm going to write the Humorous Pirate Book that this guy should have written and put it in my blog.

Were they paid off by some envious East Coasters?

Feh. Keep your life sucking sunshine, we like the rain.

Here here, octothorpe.

I remember when www.weather.com/zipcode would return local weather.

I switched to using weather underground and haven't looked back.

I can contribute to this conversation!

Here's the thing: the radar picture and the "current conditions" textual stuff is derived from two different sources. The radar is, well, a radar, and covers a very wide area. All it does is send out radio waves and they get bounced back by stuff in the atmosphere, and a big computer takes its best guess as to exactly what it saw - rain, snow, airplanes, whatever. This gets updated every five minutes or so.

What you're seeing under "current conditions" is the result of a weather observation station, probably at your nearest airport. These are usually automated and look like a an old space probe. They have rain sensors on them, and THAT is what decided it was raining, not the radar. Unless the weather really drastically changes, these take new observations only once an hour. So, "currently" could mean 50 minutes ago, when a quick shower burst over the airport, or someone accidentally turned the sprinklers on.

Now that I look at the timestamps on the images, though, they're only four minutes apart. My guess is sprinklers. Or it was cooling down and some dew formed on the sensor. You guys have dew in California, right?