Weather Guessers

I guess I just picked a weatherman without a sense of humor. Recently, I e-mailed a local weather guesser about a pet peeve of mine, and I'm reasonably sure of many others of you. My problem was the code words that are used to forecast nasty weather such as snow and other forms of pestilence.

Here's the deal. Accu-weather (this is not limited to them, I only used them as an example) posted the following snow forecasts for the coming two weeks or so.

January 23&29th, occasional snow. 1/27, snow of varying rates: (I ain't lyin') January 26th and 28th? periods of snow. January 27, 30th & 31st snow and for the grand prize,"snow much of the time (2/1)

Now I, much like other reasonable people, do understand that weather forecasting is not an exact science. ... Still, I would like to have answers to the burning (perhaps not the right word) question, which is: Am I to worry when snow is predicted? periods of snow? occasional snow, snow much of the time, or snow of varying rates. Please, can someone with foreign language skills help me out here?

I'm pretty much at home with snow flurries, that being light snow not amounting to much, or snow showers, that like rain showers, are intermittent, But HEY! Whats up with the gobbledygook? Can't they at least list in what order snow of varying rates ranks with occasional snow? Or for that matter, none of the above give us the slightest inkling, other than perhaps journalistic regard to repetition, to what order of importance, or order of seriousness they are. A few years ago, the forecast of: Occasional snow meant it was going to snow all day and it was serious. Now, due to the new code words, nobody has a clue. Why have weather forecasts if nobody understands what you are forecasting?

At this point, some of you are saying, "there goes Herb, in the juice again," but these terms are real. Unless they have changed since this morning, go to: www.accuweather.com and see for yourself. An English translation should be the minimum requirement.