Weather Forecasting with Ian Lang; Astrology Forecasting with...me.

I'm using two questions and answers from Quora today, one about weather forecasting, the other about astrology. Ian Lang answered the former; I, among others, answered the latter. It might seem that there's no connection between the two subjects. I do see a connection - however vague - so please do read on.

QUESTION: How accurate is weather forecasting these days?
An answer by Ian Lang, Leading Technician (used with his kind (blanket) permission) -

Not being one of those funny people in suits from Greenwood’s [Note from Twilight - Greenwoods is a well-known men's clothing retailer in the UK] that used to infest half of Bracknell I can’t speak for them directly, but having had to do fluid mechanics (which it is, albeit dressed up and on a very big scale) I can speak from that perspective.

When you’re dealing with fluids (gasses are also fluids) in an enclosed system, the best you can do is make educated guesses. The Greenwood Suit People (GSP) are very, very educated in their subject indeed.

The problem with what the GSPs do is manyfold and one of them goes by the name of Navier-Stokes. They’re fiendishly difficult, and those chaps at Oxford and Cambridge on here doing physics might like to go into the minutae of them but frankly they’d send me to sleep if I wasn’t so busy trying not to throw myself off the roof because of them and so I’ll just say that they’re used to calculate stuff to do with fluid motion and stress in it.

The Earth and its atmosphere are, as I’m sure you appreciate, a very large enclosed system indeed. You can’t possibly know the condition of every molecule of stuff there, or predict where hot and cold fronts will go. So, then, what you do is split the volume under consideration into smaller bits. With something so big, even smaller bits are quite large, and you might have a net in which each bit is 10km wide, 10km long and 10km high. In terms of something the size of the rock on which we live that’s a pretty fine net, but we have to remember that bits of stuff are continually leaving one cube and entering an adjacent one.

What you do is look at these nets and see what’s likely to happen. If you take some variables and give them a value, you’ll get several different outcomes depending on what values you have, and you can, with computer technology, run several variations on the theme and out will pop an aggregate with the most likely probability.

It’s not exact and it can’t be. What you see on Newsnight as a weather forecast may well have changed by six o’ clock the next morning as something that happened in Uppsala may well have changed the probability in Basingstoke from overcast to bucketing down rain.

So, then, the forecast for tomorrow will have a reasonable chance of accuracy, perhaps 70% or higher, and I’ve seen it in the eighties. It would be a very foolish forecaster indeed that said, with absolute confidence, that it will be fine and sunny all day without a doubt. I’ve never seen anybody say that there’s a 100% chance of accuracy.

You can’t do long range either. Every hour into the future you peer, the chance of you being right diminishes. If anybody is offering you a three-day forecast, take it with a pinch of salt. If anybody is offering you seven days, you may laugh in their face and call them a charlatan. If anybody’s offering you ten, they may as well be Mystic Meg.

Nature abhors a vacuum. It’s not too fond of weathermen either. But at least it allows the latter to wear suits from Greenwood.

QUESTION: There are many people who believe in astrology. If there are 100 people who are born on the same day and exactly the same time, will all of them be facing the same kind of situations in life as per astrology?


An answer by me, at Quora

“…the same kind of situations in life” is the key phrase of your question as I see it. You are not asking, primarily, whether they will share personality traits and characteristics- though those factors will, inevitably, feed in to outcomes of situations encountered. Try looking on the natal chart and planetary transits affecting it, as a kind of weather forecast, but rather than predicting rain, snow, sunshine or frost, the astrological forecast indicates periods of time when things are likely to be easy-going, and other times with potential for challenges of various kinds to arise.

100 people who share very similar natal charts will experience similar “rhythms” and experiences of easy-going periods and challenging, more difficult, periods of time, because transits of the outer, slow-moving planets, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto will be conjoining personal planets in these natal charts at similar points in time. The nature of challenges and difficulties experienced will be quite different for each individual, the ways in which challenges and difficulties arising are dealt with will be different, due to differences in each individual’s early background, location, education, life situation, and so on. Sometimes a challenge opens a door of opportunity, a chance of transformation depending on choices made. Here, and always, we're dealing with astrological potential versus real-world opportunity, or lack of it.

Natal charts of 100 near astrological "twins" would manifest in very different ways, but with subtle resonance in the rhythm of challenging times and easy-going times experienced by each individual.

I now see that I could have added a thought to my answer, in the style of Ian Lang: "If anybody's offering you a prediction of a specific situation happening at some future date, based on astrological factors, you may laugh in their face and call them a charlatan - or Mystic Meg. (Poor Meg - she gets blamed for a lot!)