The weather is XX, wish you were here
Greetings from Thousand Oaks, where this photo by Anne Cusack shows fog nestled over the city in March. What was the weather like yesterday? XX. At least, that's according to The Times' weather page.
Tina Thomson is the most recent reader to write or call about the lack of a report. “Why is the current Hi, Lo, Prcp. for Thousand Oaks, CA. always XX XX XX?” she asked in an e-mail.
Data on The Times’ weather page are provided by a vendor, Weather Central, and the weather stations are run by the National Weather Service. Since October, the equipment at the Thousand Oaks station has been providing data only sporadically.
Ron Schwarz of Weather Central said in November, after another reader inquiry, that the National Weather Service was planning a new station in Thousand Oaks but that there was no time frame for it to be set up.
Times Graphics Editor Les Dunseith, who oversees the weather page, said he’d considered replacing the Thousand Oaks report with one from a nearby site. But, he said, “the closest ones are already in our list. So our options are to run the XXs and wait for them to fix the equipment, or delete Thousand Oaks altogether.”
Dunseith said he thought keeping Thousand Oaks in the list was a better option, because it allows the city to at least receive a forecast.
But until the equipment is fixed or replaced, XX marks the spot.
-- Deirdre Edgar
Photo credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times
