WHOOPS – AT 10:29 A.M. ET:   Again.  Another wildly inaccurate weather forecast for the New York metropolitan area.  I know the huge storm is hitting New England hard, but New York City and its surroundings were spared the worst.

In our area we were told to expect 20 inches of snow.  I look out and see traffic moving, people walking, the black in the roads showing.  We were told to expect high winds, power lines down, catastrophe.  I barely heard the wind.  What I see outside are the remnants of a routine snowstorm.  No blizzard here.

I'm not complaining.  Well, yes, I am.  We've had too many of these false alarms, and each one costs tens of millions of dollars to city governments.  Average citizens, especially those on fixed budgets, spend on extra food, fuel, batteries and shovels they never turn out to need.  People who are paid only when they work stay home.  And it's happened time and time again.  It's always the same pattern - forecasting a far worse storm than we actually get.

Am I being paranoid when I say I suspect that some of this over-hype is intentional, that it covers the butts of the forecasters, who'd be skewered if they'd underpredicted a storm?  Am I completely nuts in wondering why TV news outlets never investigate these overwrought predictions?  Hey, they drive the ratings sky high.

At least this time the National Weather Service provided a bit of an apology: 

The storm has moved further east and will be departing faster than our forecasts of the past two days. The result is much less snow than previously predicted for the western half of our region. The heaviest of the snow will be over Long Island and southern Connecticut with lighter snow elsewhere through the morning hours.

The science of forecasting storms, while continually improving, still can be subject to error, especially if we're on the edge of the heavy precipitation shield. Efforts, including research, are already underway to more easily communicate that forecast uncertainty.

Rapidly deepening winter storms are very challenging to predict, specifically their track and how far west the heaviest bands will move. These bands are nearly impossible to predict until they develop. Our science has come a long way, but there are still many moving parts in the atmosphere which creates quite the forecast challenge. The heaviest snows have struggled to move west of the Hudson River. We have updated our storm total forecast. Highest totals when the event is over Tuesday night will be across Long Island and southern Connecticut.

COMMENT:   Think of that explanation the next time "climate experts" tell us they can predict global warming 50 years from now.  Maybe they should concentrate on predicting storms 50 hours from now.

January 27, 2015