The hazards of long range forecasting...

[Robert Dewey]

I like how the winter outlook had a 55% chance for "dry" pasted across a region that had one of the snowiest winters on record. Our NWS, about 15 miles away from me (DTX, near Detroit), recorded +100 inches of snowfall this year, compared to our 50 inch average...

Never rely on long range forecasts :lol:

 

[Jeff Snyder]

To their credit... Notice that they use probabilities. Obviously, barring a 0% or 100% probability, things are never certain.

 

[Robert Dewey]

Originally posted by Jeff Snyder
To their credit... Notice that they use probabilities. Obviously, barring a 0% or 100% probability, things are never certain.

Well, I didn't mean to discredit them, rather I was just pointing out that long range forecasting has a LONG way to go, and that it's usually not much more than a very rough educated guess...

 

[GPhillips]

One can, and and sometimes does get above climatological values of snowfall with below climatological values of precipitation (mainly because of low water equivalent and/or lack of significant rain for those places where winter precip amounts come from both rain and snow).

I'm sure that was not the case for Michigan this last winter, but it does happen sometimes.

 

[Joel Wright]

Here in Illinois that time period was by far the most benign I've ever seen it around here since I can remember.

 

[Andrew Pritchard]

Originally posted by Joel Wright
Here in Illinois that time period was by far the most benign I've ever seen it around here since I can remember.

I'm with you on that one too. Here in eastern Illinois, there was never a point this winter where we had more than 3 inches on the ground. I think we might have had 10 inches total all season...all coming in small intervals. Was probably one or two times where the tops of the grass blades were not visible.

 

[Dan Cook]

Macomb had 4...maybe less.