The most memorable piece of advice I ever learned from former KPRC 2 Chief Meteorologist Frank Billingsley was this: “You only know what you know.”
He’d usually say it after a forecast didn’t go quite the way we expected. At the end of the day, our job is about predicting the future, and only God knows the future. We work with the best tools, data, and technology available, but there will always be unknowns.
Frank had a way of reminding me of this with a sly smile when we’d sit down the next day to review what went wrong. His point was simple but profound: “You only know what you know.”
The Meteorology of 1900:
Long before satellites, Doppler radar, and computer models, forecasting relied on handwritten observations of temperature, pressure, and precipitation. In 1900, Isaac Cline was the chief meteorologist in Galveston for the U.S. Weather Bureau (what we now know as the National Weather Service). Despite two powerful hurricanes striking near Matagorda in 1875 and 1886, Cline famously declared, “The Texas coast is not liable to serious damage from storms.”
After the 1886 storm, Galveston’s residents and city leaders put forth the idea of building a seawall for protection from a future hurricane. But Cline had a scientific reason why he thought it wasn’t necessary.
“The opinion held by some, who are unacquainted with the actual conditions, that Galveston will at some time be seriously damaged by such a disturbance is simply an absurd delusion,” he wrote. “It can only have its origin in imagination, not reasoning. With so much lower land to the north for water to spread over, it would be impossible for any cyclone to materially injure the city.”
Looking back, I can almost hear Frank Billingsley’s words: “You only know what you know.”
Cline wasn’t being reckless or foolish. In fact, he was considered one of the most respected scientific minds of his time.
The lesson for today:
We may think we know better today, but from what I hear when I give hurricane talk (or just in everyday conversations), we still haven’t learned the lesson of being certain about something that may not be true.
These are some of the responses that concern me:
- “I’ve lived in this home for 40 years and never been hit by a hurricane. They always turn before they get here.” (I hear this most often from people in Florida.)
- “I don’t live in a flood plain, and this home has never flooded. I don’t need flood insurance.”
- “We just had a bad flood. We won’t see another one for 100 years.”
- “Tornadoes don’t happen in this part of the country.”
- “That storm you’re tracking isn’t going to hit us. Stop trying to scare people, you’re only saying this to get more viewers.” (This one came in an email I received on Wednesday, July 2nd. Hurricane Beryl made landfall six days later, on Monday, July 8th.)
You only know what you know.