Weather gripe: What drives you mad?

[Michael Rogers]

As with many of you, light to moderate snowfalls. Or when a very large snow is forecast then you only get 5 inches while towns 15 miles to the north or south get 20+ inches. The winter is very boring to me and the 5 inch snowfalls are just annoying. If it's going to snow than SNOW! I want something that will shut places down and take out power lines.

Oh yeah, and 4 inch snowfalls with highs in the 30's during the middle of April like we had here last week. I'm ready for thunder and lightning, not light snowfalls!

 

[SteveCarter]

Snow.....or the LACK thereof. Here in the NW corner of South Carolina, we do get those occasional forecasts that prompt schoold closings for the following day...1 inch. But even THAT, WE never get it. We are so close to the foothills of the APPS (you can see the mountains from the roof of our house), that these impressive snow-makers ALWAYS fizzle out, and the temps hover tantalizingly close to, or SLIGHTLY above the joyline..32 degrees. I can't say how many times the forecast has been for 1-3, 2-4, or GASP..the 4 or more thing, and we saw (at 4AM, because we stayed up all night awaiting this joyous occasion) nothing but a cold, 32.1 degree rain. Always. The mountains block the storms in the summer, and the snow in the winter. We do get the colder temperatures here BECAUSE of the mountains, but the precip gets slaughtered. The only way we get anything in the winter is if the system moves up from the SOUTH, and then it's to warm. People down here use the forecast of snow to meet old friends at the grocery store, and catch up on things missed since the last missed forecast. Kids get giddy, and get to stay up until 11 or even midnight, then are to tired to go to school the next day, and THAT is why I really believe they cancel school....lol

 

[Doug Lee]

I'll admit that snow and ice can make some pretty scenery, but dealing with it - UGH!

During the winter storm that hit Eastern OK in mid-January I wound up with 2 - 3 inches of sleet on my front porch and yard. I removed a chunk of the stuff from my porch one morning and threw it out into the yard. Instead of sinking, as it would have done if the ground was covered with snow, the chunk just slid for a ways. The furthest I went for a week was out to the street to get the newspaper.

Also, when I see a bunch of cumulus towers going up but no serious development, I say to myself, "Nice decorations, but no party!"

 

[MClarkson]

Theres this lake right next to work, so every time its windy and I'm working, and I wish i was out windsurfing, I get to see all the nice whitecaps right before I get to work. It drives me nuts.

 

[Brett Roberts]

Way too many to name, but I'll get the big ones off my chest...

1. Busted winter weather events. Both here and where I grew up in N VA, it seems 9 times out of 10, winter storms underperform significantly against short-term forecasts (and even moreso against medium-range ones). This winter certainly did nothing but solidify the "Norman bubble theory." We were right on the southern fringes of the deformation band on Nov. 30 and got dry-slotted during the early afternoon, resulting in 2-3" where areas only 15-30 miles north of us saw more than twice that. Okay fine, that's climo, and we had the misfortune of the sharp cutoff being just north rather than just south. But then the mid-January apocalyptic ice storm with wall-to-wall media coverage comes along and proves that despite a +10°C layer at 850 mb, we can somehow manage to see all sleet and no freezing rain due to some whacked drop-size-distribution and bitter cold surface temperatures (amazing, since only one day earlier the concern was sfc temps failing to get below freezing in time). So there we were with Oklahoma's second historic winter event in one season, but this time just a bit off the northern fringes of a high-impact event. I pretty much threw in the towel completely at that point and was not surprised in the least when the several subsequent winter storms that had local media howling for 4-8" completely failed to materialize.

2. Chase days that start off well north of a warm front. March 30 and last Friday prime examples. Driving over 100 miles through stratiform rain and winter-like temperature just to get into the warm sector, knowing an equally or more unpleasant return trip is in store, isn't exactly my idea of enjoyable chasing. I think I have this sensory association in my head between storm chasing and the smell of warm, humid Plains spring air - warm enough for shorts and t-shirt - with cumulus towers going up everywhere, and when most of the route for a chase fails to conform it just isn't the same. I guess that's part of why I've never felt compelled to give cold-core setups a try.

3. Pretty much any extended period of cloudiness or stratiform rain, particularly with cool temps. Maybe it makes me a lesser weather enthusiast, but I'll take 80 and sunny any day over that depressing garbage. Yes, extreme weather is my favorite kind by far, but it's sort of an all-or-nothing deal for me. No t-storms or snow? No record-breaking heat or bitter cold? Then keep the mediocre, nuisance-type conditions away and at least let me dwell on my meteorological misfortune in comfort.

 

[Paul Knightley]

We get such a mixture of weather each year in the UK that it's hard to get bored/annoyed with it, but every so often, especially in winter, a large anticyclone will develop and bring 2-3 weeks of quiet, gloomy weather, and that's pretty annoying!

I suppose not getting a great deal of major severe convective weather is somewhat annoying, but at the same time, something of a blessing!