Although no intelligent person expects the wisest weather prophet to be infallible, our official meteorological bureau –- owing to unsuspected “highs” or “lows” sneaking up and attacking them in the rear, so to speak -– have sometimes been led astray, much to the hilarious scorn of the imperfectly informed.

I would not be a weather man
   And strive to tip the weather;
For, just to hear their blether, man,
   When critics get together,
You’d think predicting shine or rain
A simple art one might attain
With quite an ordinary brain,
   Sans study’s stern exactions
But he who tracks the “high” or “low”
Soon learns that knowledge comes so slow
That, learning more, the less you know
   Of cosmic interactions.

Dull folk declare his prophecy
   Is just a pretty fiction;
Yet, alter, sneer and scoff, a-sea
   To find his late prediction.
He sends an aeronaut on high,
Thro’ frozen miles, to peek and pry
For secrets from the voiceless sky;
   With data most meticulous
Ethereal voices from afar
Inform him how conditions are...
And then, some wicked little star
   Makes all his work ridiculous.

Because a breeze stirs lazily
   Beyond the brooding Leeuwin
And western skies loom hazily
   He deems there’s “somethin’ doin’.”
Then, banking on some treacherous “low,”
He takes a chance ... But bright suns glow
When he’d predicted winds would blow
   Thro’ dampish days and flatuous;
For gods who rule the rushing stars
With godlike scorn of isobars,
Or else dead hands of avatars
   Have made his forecast fatuous.

The simplest cold (‘Tis comical)
   Still stumps our wise physicians;
Depressions economical
   Defy great politicians;
Yet Kudos come to even these,
And prestige, and the mental ease
Of having someone they can please.
   Often their lore quite famous is.
But who would be a weather seer,
To scan false skies, with one truth clear:
Come rain, come shine, one must appear
   The butt of ignoramases?

"Den"
Herald, 3 April 1935, p6