Rain in Exactly 12 Minutes

How weather apps — yes, really — became the ultimate reality show.

By Mary Mann

We were in Prospect Park when George pulled out his phone, tapped the screen, and announced: “It’s gonna rain in 12 minutes.”

George’s girlfriend rolled her eyes. My boyfriend tilted his head back and stared up at the sky, which was gray but not particularly menacing. Then he looked at his own phone. “The Weather Channel app says 30 percent,” he said. “So maybe we stay a little longer?”

George shrugged and put his phone back in his pocket. We went back to talking, but our eyes strayed up. Weather is typically derided as boring, “the last refuge of the unimaginative” attributed to Oscar Wilde, but this had become a competition — whose app was better — and we all had something to lose, namely dry clothes and decent hair. “Was that a drop?” we asked at intervals, studying the sky for secrets.

I have a theory that Wilde pooh-poohed weather because meteorology was invented in his lifetime — he was sick of hearing people talk about this newly predictable thing. Before the 1860s, people attempted with limited success to understand the weather by observing animal behavior (e.g., if an anthill closed there’d be a thunderstorm) or planetary movements or “rings and halos” in the sky…