I am going to try not to offend anyone here; my issue is not with religion or prayer; my blog is known for media fact-checking and you're about to see a big example of that. I wasn't going to blog about this, but I saw a story on Fox News last night that I thought was really unfair to the scientific community. The headline was "Prayer For Rain Works!" (in regards to the Georgia governor holding a 250-person prayer session Wednesday). That's exactly what the on-air talent at Fox said, that the prayer vigil worked, causing rain "later that night," even though they did not interview any meteorologists, only a religious spokesperson.

Other media outlets, such as USAToday, were more fair, pointing out that "the rain was already in the forecast before the prayer session." This is exactly the thought I had after seeing the Fox News story, and I'd like to offer some proof of that here -- courtesy of the government's archives of Forecast Model [JessePedia] data.

The facts: The prayer vigil was held Tuesday, during the day (I couldn't find a specific time). Rain was reported at the official reporting station in Atlanta between midnight and 4 AM Thursday (totaling 0.14") so Fox's claim is off by 24 hours to start with, and I suspect the governor consulted with a meteorologist (or at least checked the AccuWeather.com!) to decide on which day to hold the vigil in order to avoid embarrassment (prior to at least Monday, if not Tuesday, the news articles that I found online indicated it would be held "that week").

Below is a check of the NMM model's prediction of precipitation for the week in Georgia as of Tuesday morning at sunrise, before the vigil took place:

The approximate location of Atlanta is shown with an "X". From this chart it would appear that around half an inch (0.50") of rain was already predicted for the city BEFORE the vigil took place. In the forecast issued the next morning AFTER the vigil, the forecast amount had actually DECREASED to around 0.25".

In fact, the rain may have been predicted for up to two weeks in advance by the GFS model, whose archives I could only take back to the 10th. Animating the forecast every 12 hours from 11/11 to 11/14, it predicted variably 0.5 to 10 cm (0.20 to 4.00 inches) of rain for the Atlanta area (miniature animation below):

Another issue I have with calling this a "success" in regards to the drought is that it only produced 0.14" of rain in Atlanta (at the airport). The government map below (produced by correcting radar estimates with actual gauge amounts) shows around 0.25" falling within the city limits with over 1.5" in the northernmost part of the state.

Those amounts are 0.7%, 1.25%, and 7.5% of the amount (20 inches, conservatively) that the state is behind this year. This hardly made a dent in the drought, as proven by the yearly rainfall deficit map below:

In other words, an additional 142 prayer vigils will be required to bring the Atlanta airport up to normal rainfall for 2007. Amounts were also less than the last rain event, on October 24th, before which there was no vigil.

Adding to all this: this article, which says that the Governor willingly wasted millions of gallons of water earlier this year. I'm going to call this one a valid try on his part to impress the public, but totally busted.

Of course, the other possibility is that this prayer will be successful over the long-term, reversing the drought despite forecasts from AccuWeather and the NWS that say it will last all winter. If that happens, then I'll post on this subject again, and this time, I'll have to "bust" myself.

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