For those of you who didn't experience it, much of the East Coast experienced a crippling blizzard this weekend. Locales from the Carolinas and Atlanta, to the cities of New York and Boston, all felt the effects of rain, sleet, snow, and wind. However, many locations in the Mid-Atlantic region, like Washington and Baltimore, didn't receive much more than a dusting, as opposed to the 6 inches or more they were originally forecast to get. Much weeping and gnashing of teeth resulted from this botched forecast, as kids and adults had to go to school and work today. And, of course, the weathermen in the area were subject to the usual complaint of "those a**holes never get a forecast right". True? Sometimes. Deserved? Hardly.
Being a weatherman is a difficult career to pursue. The atmosphere is the most complicated fluid the Earth contains within itself. It has far vaster changes in density than the oceans, its heat source is far more varied than the Earth's core, and a single change in the movement of a molecule of air in China can result in a tornado roaring through central Oklahoma seven days later. Today, weather forecasters have models that can reasonably predict many weather events 4 to 5 days out into the future, but sometimes, the models don't always agree with each other.
Take this past blizzard, for instance. Five days ago, one model run had consistently shown a monster storm barreling up the coast and burying the entire I-95 corridor with a foot of snow or more, but another set of models had the storm passing harmlessly out to sea. With three days until the storm formed, the one model that had consistently brought the storm up the coast now was shifting out to sea as well, so the meteorologists predicting this system assumed that the storm was now going to blow by without affecting the East Coast. Two days ago, one of the models shifted the storm back to the coast, while the others kept it out to sea, and with only one day remaining until the storm formed did the models finally start to show some agreement on the storm's path.
There was another caveat, however. The models were consistent about one thing: that the storm's precipitation gradient was extremely tight. This meant that the difference in distance between receiving half a foot and a dusting was only about 25 miles or so. Given that the models still had a difference in paths that was at least 50 miles the day of the storm's formation, any deviation in track would be critical to the East Coast cities getting nothing, to being snowed under. That tiny deviation in track was what spared Baltimore and DC, and buried New York and Long Island instead.
In short, the weather forecasters all up and down the East Coast were never really able to get a decent handle on this system until about 24 hrs before the storm formed, and even then were very unsure of snowfall totals with it as well. The storm presented challenges and questions on a number of levels to even the most skilled of weathermen and women, and therefore the civil authorities had little time to prepare for this system, relative to other storms of it's nature.
In short, as much as you may want to, don't hate on the weathermen. They don't try to mess up the forecasts on purpose and certainly would love a day off as much as the rest of us. Try to keep that in mind, the next time you see 6 inches of Partly Cloudy on your driveway.
