Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

forecast

2024-07-09 View on smbc-comics.com → 1 revision
forecast
Votey panel for forecast
This explanation is incomplete or may contain errors. It was generated by AI and has not yet been reviewed by a human editor.

Explanation

This comic imagines what weather forecasting would be like in the Biblical era. A weather forecaster stands in front of a map delivering a forecast that incorporates Biblical plagues and divine punishments: "Going into the weekend we have a major budget of toxic beer downtown Babylon, so expect warm humid air when the rivers start running with blood. Get your umbrella ladies because the frogs will be coming down by this afternoon. But we can expect a cool breeze this evening when the sky grows black as pitch and the sun will not look upon the earth."

The forecaster treats locusts, rivers of blood, rains of frogs, and supernatural darkness as routine meteorological events, delivering them in the breezy, casual tone of a modern TV weather presenter. The punchline at the bottom reads: "Weather forecasting was much easier in the Biblical Era."

The humor comes from the incongruity of applying the modern, cheerful weather-report format to apocalyptic Biblical events. But the caption adds a second joke: weather forecasting was "easier" because instead of complex atmospheric modeling, you just had to know which plagues God was sending that week. It's a simpler forecasting model -- not probabilistic fluid dynamics, but "check which divine punishment is scheduled." The comic plays on the comedic contrast between the banal professionalism of TV weather reporting and the existential horror of Biblical catastrophes.

View History (1) Original Comic
← Previous Comic Next Comic →