You can always count on NY1 for a certain dramatic flair--or fiction--when it comes to reporting the weather. A couple of months ago, a story described participants in a parade as enduring "hot" weather, when the actual high temperature was 78.

Now we have the heavy rain this morning, and NY1 is reporting it as "remnants" of Hurricane Frances. This is completely wrong. The heavy rain this morning is simply the result of the prevailing tropical flow and a lot of moisture in the atmosphere. The remnants of Frances are still all the way down south, in Georgia. Although rain from the system has spread up into Ohio and western Pennsylvania, it doesn't take a meteorologist to look at a weather map and see a distinct separation between that rain and ours. Our heavy rain is more the result of this tropical moisture interacting with a wavering cold front stretching through northern New York and New England.

I'll never understand why people expected to report the truth are willing to create a double standard when it comes to meteorology. Is it because nobody will pay attention otherwise?

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Postscript (12:24pm): According to an AP story, Ralph Izzo, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service, attributed the rain to the remains of Hurricane Frances. I still don't buy it and think NY1 rushed to put "Frances" in the headline for ratings. If you look at the radar and surface map, there is a distinct rounded area of rain emanating from the center of the storm. New York City is not in it. Tropical moisture is streaming up from the southeastern states and the rain here is more the result of the interplay between this moisture and the cold front.

Determining causation in weather--a phenomenon of interconnected fluid events--is a matter of judgment. I still don't think the relationship between Frances and the rain today makes the cut.