Cone of Uncertainty is that bundle of strands in the spaghetti models that show where an unpredictable storm will surprise us the least. It’s a Vegas odds maker that pays off to those who cover their bets by boarding up or evacuating.
We have a fascination with prediction. The scientific name now for fortune telling. If we read the cards right, they only tell us probabilities. Knowing our odds, always changes the outcomes. Chaos seems baked into what we do with what we know. Learning drives change. Change drives away predictability. We are often burned by what we wish for. In this moment, I reckon with the wild outcomes of a storm, that seem more manageable than war. Yet we know better than to summon storms.
The Cone of Certainty, means that someone will be struck, misery will rain, and many of us will regret the loss of what we had.
Cone of Certainty
as you can imagine
the cone of uncertainty
is all over the place.
Not just with this storm,
but with the whole season.
How many, how big?
How often?
And will they be earthquake free?
Come with after floods of dam bursts?
Will there be cholera, looting?
Will relief come? Will survivors
fight each other to the next round
and the one after that, getting food,
water, gas, ammo?
Will the efforts be spread too thin,
come too late, be too little.
Will the heat kill us off first?
Or will all this be footnote tiny
in comparison to the cone of uncertainty
that handles history after nations war?
Somewhere, rockets still launch.
Who has time to watch the skies
as we dig ourselves out to what we hopefully
will return to: the ever building Before
we take so much for granted.