Stupid Weather Channel.... wrong forecasts.... *grumble*

[iMpathetic]

So I woke up at 6AM this morning here in Chapel Hill, NC and what do I see? Sleet bouncing across the deck. It changed over to a rainy (oh i hope it's freezing rain) substance about 5 minutes after I went outside.

Why am I immensely irritated?

The forecast called for freezing rain, sleet, and a tad of snow through noon today. It's already changed over to rain, time 6:55 AM. as I write this. We have a 2 hour delay out here, but school would've been closed if the promises (aka forecasts) had been kept/fulfilled.

They do say, however, that the dew points are in the mid twenties, and thus could drop the temperatures back down to ~32.

We'll see.

 

[iSaint]

All weather persons have different opinions. It drives me nuts. I use forecast.weather.gov mostly. What did your local tv weather say?

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

...We have a 2 hour delay out here, but school would've been closed if the promises (aka forecasts) had been kept/fulfilled.

??

It wasn't a promise... They simply told you what they thought would happen It's not like don't "keep promises," nature is just unpredictable.

 

[iMpathetic]

??

It wasn't a promise... They simply told you what they thought would happen It's not like don't "keep promises," nature is just unpredictable.

Bah. Yes I know..... Just in a crizzappy mizzood this mizzorning.

My local TV weather said that it would snow an inch, sleet, and then freezing rain.

 

[Rodimus Prime]

wow you are whinning because school was not canceled.... You do know you would have to make up that day which means that lost school day would be taken from some where else.

 

[adk]

It's nearly impossible to predict exactly how much of each type of precipitation will fall when the storm is a snow/sleet/rain mix. If (when) the storm deviates even a few miles from its predicted course the entire forecast will change because there's such a small margin of error in predicting a storm like that. So the storm went 10 miles further north than the meteorologist predicted, or the temperature was four degrees warmer than he predicted. not the end of the world....

 

[iMpathetic]

wow you are whinning because school was not canceled.... You do know you would have to make up that day which means that lost school day would be taken from some where else.

I suppose you might have a point. I don't care about missing school cause of the snow, I care about there being enough snow to miss school.

But yes, i was whining. I just woke up, gimme a break

It's nearly impossible to predict exactly how much of each type of precipitation will fall when the storm is a snow/sleet/rain mix. If (when) the storm deviates even a few miles from its predicted course the entire forecast will change because there's such a small margin of error in predicting a storm like that. So the storm went 10 miles further north than the meteorologist predicted, or the temperature was four degrees warmer than he predicted. not the end of the world....

Sigh..... Yes, I should have thought about that, funnily enough, I'm obsessed with snow and weather but am apparently not rational about it. Actually, we're getting freezing rain now! 29.5 degrees! Yay!

 

[MacNut]

The local forecast doesn't come from The Weather Channel anyways, it comes form the National Weather Service local office.

 

[eric55lv]

I know whan that Pacific storm came it said that it was going to rain in Las Vegas 5 to 10 inches but it barly rained

 

[Don't panic]

----------------------------^

indeed.

 

[Counterfit]

Psshh, try living in New England where they're just as likely to get it right as anyone on the street.

 

[IJ Reilly]

The local forecast doesn't come from The Weather Channel anyways, it comes form the National Weather Service local office.

Exactly so. And the repackagers can and often do broad-brush forecasts and even current conditions in ways that might well not be accurate for where you happen to be.

 

[MacNut]

Usually the forecast is tailored to the cable franchise city. So if you live 5 towns away you are not going to get a forecast for your city.

 

[apachie2k]

i would be pissed if god told me it was gonna snow w.e., and it didn't... but it's some bum looking out the window and on his computer and guessing ...

 

[iheartcanada]

Yeah. I'm down the highway here in Rocky Mount, and I was also expecting a wintery mix, but no, rain all dang day... it was incredibly depressong.

 

[LizKat]

Psshh, try living in New England where they're just as likely to get it right as anyone on the street.

+1, Catskill Mountains

They do say if you don't like the weather in the Catskills, wait ten minutes. It's all by guess and by God around here anyway with the mountains and all that water in all those creek valleys.

Right where I live is a serious cold spot. The regional winter low forecasts are way high for clear nights. I mentally bump it down another six or eight degrees. NOAA's point forecasting stuff is getting it a bit closer to right more often, but then of course it varies more often, so the perception is still that we might as well go outside and wave a finger in the breeze.

When heavy lake effect snow off the Great Lakes is forecast to swing into the Finger Lakes region, some of those bands will occasionally stream a lot farther down, get over into the Western Catskills and then more or less park in the valleys. If it's from a colder front moving in, and there's still some water running in the creeks, our 1-3" forecast can turn into a 10" dump without much notice.

I dunno, I kinda like it that Mother Nature can still demo who's in charge. I just think we need more R&D bucks to NOAA (and less for bridges to nowhere) so we get best possible heads up time for severe weather.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Usually the forecast is tailored to the cable franchise city. So if you live 5 towns away you are not going to get a forecast for your city.

It's not this so much, but a function of the NWS's highly imperfect zone forecast system and the TAFs (Terminal Area Forecasts) which are done only for selected airports. You punch in the name of the city you want and you probably get either the generalized zone forecast or the forecast for the nearest airport. It can be deceiving, if you don't know how the data is aggregated.

Oh, and the forecasters are often wrong. Sometimes they can get it right-on ten days out, other times they can't nail it from two, depending on the complexity of the pattern.

 

[Airforce]

Weather Forcasts...bleh

Half the time they are wrong I always love walking across the hall when it doesn't rain and saying," Y'all want me to take over tomorrow? I can take some old values and make some guesses, too!"

 

[iMpathetic]

OOHHH!! 2-4 inches of snow today it's already started raining here in Chapel Hill and will change over to snow by noon or so. I may post pics if and when it does snow.

 

[MacNut]

Ok so I might be a bit of a weather geek but The local forecasts are tailored to each cable company head end. So if you live 20 miles away from the local head end your weather might be different from what you see outside your door.

 

[ryannel2003]

At least you got something... they predicted 1-2 inches here in New Bern. Of course, I never get my hopes up that much since its usually to warm around here to snow anyway. Then i wake up and lo and behold: not one damn snow flake on the ground!

 

[iheartcanada]

At least you got something... they predicted 1-2 inches here in New Bern. Of course, I never get my hopes up that much since its usually to warm around here to snow anyway. Then i wake up and lo and behold: not one damn snow flake on the ground!

Yeah, over here in Rocky Mount, all it did was flurry for an hour.

 

[iMpathetic]

Really? Over here in Chapel Hill we got 1.5 inches!!!