Nice Article About Winter Storm Forecast Improvements

[Mike Smith]

http://www.kansas.com/2011/01/23/1687003/meteorologists-getting-snow-forecasts.html

 

[Wes Carter]

This is interesting. I've noticed that average people have been talking about how the forecasters have been nailing the snow forecasts in Middle Tennessee with one caveat: They are giving credit to the TV meteorologists.

 

[Mike Smith]

with one caveat: They are giving credit to the TV meteorologists.

What is wrong with that?

 

[rdale]

They are giving credit to the TV meteorologists.

Interesting... If they get their forecasts from the TV mets (which clearly a majority of the public still does) shouldn't that be where the credit goes?

 

[Wes Carter]

There is nothing really wrong with it, many of them do a great job. For the most part we have some really good ones in Nashville. But the advances in forecasting are due to systemic improvements in many areas of the process as a whole as described in the article (improvements in the models, additional data being added to ensemble forecasting, a collective better understanding of the whole process, etc...).

The hit and miss forecasts of the past were not the TV mets fault, and the increasingly accurate forecasts as of late are not the result of some great epiphany any one of them had. The whole process is improving, and I think everyone involved deserves credit as was described in the article Mike shared with us.

Edit: I should have said "They are giving all of the credit to the TV meteorologists" in my first post. I was wondering why my post appeared to rub you all the wrong way until I read it again.

 

[rdale]

It wasn't a rub, just seemed strange That explanation makes your comment much more understandable...

 

[B Ozanne]

I remember some of our biggest snowstorms in the mid-90's were progged very well more than a week in advance. I also remember some very big busts. Where they cancelled school and not a single snow flake fell.

This winter has been interesting where I live. The storms have all verified, but often had very low confidence until 24 hours out. One of the major reasons for the plowing disaster in NYC in the Boxing Day Blizzard. The current east coast storm was also well forecast, but it wasn't until last night when the precip type became more clear.

 

[Jesse Risley]

On a related note, Dr. Louis Uccellini, the NCEP director, was interviewed by The Washington Post to get his take on the recent winter weather synopsis across the northeast. In addition to getting his thoughts on the forecast, they had him explain why he thought the computer models have struggled to agree on projections for several winter storms so far this season, especially compared to last winter.

The full article can be found here.