Well, after yesterday's post, I'm happy to see the National Weather Service knock down its temperature prediction for Thursday by 10 degrees. The NWS is now forecasting 50, not 60, as a high temperature, with southeast (onshore) winds of 10-15 mph.

It's a victory of common sense, which is too often lost in the dizzying maze of information generated by high-tech computer models and other forecasting tools. In his visionary book Data Smog: Surviving the Information Glut (1998), David Shenk observed how an abundance of data can actually make people less knowledgeable and productive. Weather forecasting is one area in which this is definitely true.

When meteorologists make forecasts, they can refer to any of six or more different computer models, each presenting predictions for ten to twenty atmospheric parameters, from surface temperature to upper air winds to all kinds of indices computed with advanced thermodynamic equations. It's easy to get lost in this data, follow the computers blindly, and forget what you know. Because the information appears in such official-looking and slick form, the predictions it represents appear to be failsafe. It's another example of too much trust in technology just because it is cool.

The best meteorologists use the computer models as a starting point but also leave plenty of room for intuition. With Thursday's forecast, I really don't care what the ECMWF is forecasting for 850mb winds; with no prevailing flow to offset a sea breeze and ocean temperatures around 40, New York City (especially Brooklyn and Queens) will have a lot of trouble climbing through the 50s. Personally, I think low 50s for Central Park sounds about right for Thursday, given the information we have so far.

Excess information is not particular to meteorology. Technology makes it easy to overload people. In this medium, I've never understood the point of the 600-person "blogroll." I wind up skipping the entire thing.

We've heard a lot about the "information economy." I think the most successful in the information economy will be the people with the expertise to know what's most important to find--and to save room for those timeless assets like common sense, intuition and experience.