What's With the Weather?

Weather forecasting is not an exact science.  I sure hope that wasn't a surprise to anyone.  Actually, it's amazing to me that forecasters get it right so often.  Sure, you can see a weather pattern and know, based on experience, what it should do.  If it were only that easy.  Every weather pattern is affected by factors unrelated to the pattern itself.  Is there a low pressure system coming in from the south? The north?  What about a high pressure system?  Has the humidity been unusually high or low?  What about the ground temperature?  Is the ground retaining more or less heat than usual?  All of these things, plus probably the alignment of the moon and the sun and the stars, affect weather patterns.  Yet, we expect forecasts to be accurate.  Such was the case today, the date of the great snowstorm of 2013.  Governments closed, schools were cancelled, offices closed - for 1 -2 inches of snow, almost none of it sticking to the roads.  What a bust.  It gave me another day to recuperate (and to cage some homemade chicken soup), so I'm not complaining.
Weather forecasting reminds me of the Trenches in so many ways.  (Of course it does, otherwise, why talk about it here?).  Clients ask us all the time to predict what the judge assigned to their case will decide.  They want us to tell them if this is a father's or a mother's judge.  They want to know how the judge feels about adultery.  Does the judge believe in joint custody?  How will the judge view their significant inheritance? We can tell them generally how the judge has ruled based on other cases before that judge, and based on what our friends in the Trenches have told us are their experiences.  We can make assumptions, like the weatherman, about what the judge will do in the future based on those cases and things the judge has said in the past.  Based on those assumptions, we can tell the client what might be the range of the judge's decision.  We preface any such statement with the statement that we don't know what the judge will do in this particular case, or whether we will even have this judge come day of trial.  Our client or their spouse could remind the judge of their beloved relative....or the black sheep of their family.  Maybe the judge had the same kind of issues with money that our clients have, and have strong ideas about a solution.  Maybe the judge had a terrible experience with the result of his or her last trial and is anxious not to repeat the experience.  In other words, with judges, like the weather, there are a lot of variables that have nothing to do with the case at hand, but which will influence the decision.  So, when a client asks us to predict what their judge will do, think of the weather.  Here in the Trenches.