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NE & Tristate area, you ready for the 'historic' big storm Mon-Tuesday?

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Mai72 said:
To be honest I'm tired of hearing about this storm. The coverage on this storm has been on all day.

You have to wonder what has happened to us. Have we become wussies? Imagine showing those pics to someone from the past.

What would they say?
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"how, that's so handy that you have so much information! it's much better than not knowing a blizzard is approaching until the last minute."
 
Mermaidman said:
USAirways cancelled my afternoon flight to Newark. They re-booked me on the afternoon flight to La Guardia . . . :hmm:
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glad my BF was on an early flight out of Newark down south... love 'em to death, but I'm looking forward to enjoying a couple days alone while he's at a work conference.
 
purbeast0 said:
weathermen are so fucking wrong all the time, the profession is such a fucking joke.

i'm not in NE, i'm in MD, but this whole weekend they were wrong.

they were calling for snow friday night. i went to see a movie and all that happened was a little bit of rain. it was like 45 degrees, not even close to snow weather.

then i heard last week it was supposed to snow sunday night. last night it was again like 45 degrees, it was like 50 during the day and nice outside.

last night i'm watching the news, and they say the snow won't start until like 5pm today. of course, i wake up to snow on the ground.

completely worthless. i just do not understand how technology in this field has gotten significantly worse than it was 15-20 years ago when i was in school. they could predict it perfectly back then.
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What you are doing is picking and choosing memories. I cannot fathom the ratio of accurate predictions to missed predictions for our local weather. I feel like it has increased steadily over the years, because I have seen so many times stated accumulations or temperature predictions and what do they report the next day? Bam, perfect predictions, right on the nose. This isn't every day, sure, but they are so close to perfect more often than not.

This week, was different. This storm shaped up far different than everyone anticipated, and it tracked differently across the great lakes than predicted. Nearly all week we were originally forecast for a fair accumulation, possibly 4", then as we get to the day before, it turns into "an inch at most, a dusting in areas" as the storm was tracking further south. Snow was to end around noon on Sunday... it stuck around all day, but still didn't amount to much, perhaps 1 centimeter?

Weather is not a perfect science. It is a combination of the states of so many variables, involving two or three systems of fluid dynamics on scales that really are too damn vast for feeble human minds. The general state of things is low and high pressure systems can be fairly accurately placed on large geological regions, and weather systems can sometimes produce very textbook patterns in that they can then predict generic events weeks out, sometimes even accumulations and rough wind strength half a week out to a high degree of accuracy. But Earth does not always produce things we humans can predict to the finest detail, our computers are not yet powerful enough, and frankly, science likely doesn't have all the variables figured out to even feed the computers enough. So I take that back, the computers might be capable today.

It certainly looks like this situation is that, while the week leading up to this storm resulted in missed predictions and an end-strength that it seems no one saw coming at first, now that it is shaping up, all the connected weather patterns are taking on a textbook appearance. When all the computer models are in agreement, that's not good. When they vary, you get variable outcomes. When they all agree, you might as well start preparing. As has been detailed, local accumulations are going to vary significantly, because the individual bands are impossible to perfectly predict, but generalized ranges and concentrations should be quite damn close to the mark if I were to put any money on it.
 
destrekor said:
What you are doing is picking and choosing memories. I cannot fathom the ratio of accurate predictions to missed predictions for our local weather. I feel like it has increased steadily over the years, because I have seen so many times stated accumulations or temperature predictions and what do they report the next day? Bam, perfect predictions, right on the nose. This isn't every day, sure, but they are so close to perfect more often than not.

This week, was different. This storm shaped up far different than everyone anticipated, and it tracked differently across the great lakes than predicted. Nearly all week we were originally forecast for a fair accumulation, possibly 4", then as we get to the day before, it turns into "an inch at most, a dusting in areas" as the storm was tracking further south. Snow was to end around noon on Sunday... it stuck around all day, but still didn't amount to much, perhaps 1 centimeter?

Weather is not a perfect science. It is a combination of the states of so many variables, involving two or three systems of fluid dynamics on scales that really are too damn vast for feeble human minds. The general state of things is low and high pressure systems can be fairly accurately placed on large geological regions, and weather systems can sometimes produce very textbook patterns in that they can then predict generic events weeks out, sometimes even accumulations and rough wind strength half a week out to a high degree of accuracy. But Earth does not always produce things we humans can predict to the finest detail, our computers are not yet powerful enough, and frankly, science likely doesn't have all the variables figured out to even feed the computers enough. So I take that back, the computers might be capable today.

It certainly looks like this situation is that, while the week leading up to this storm resulted in missed predictions and an end-strength that it seems no one saw coming at first, now that it is shaping up, all the connected weather patterns are taking on a textbook appearance. When all the computer models are in agreement, that's not good. When they vary, you get variable outcomes. When they all agree, you might as well start preparing. As has been detailed, local accumulations are going to vary significantly, because the individual bands are impossible to perfectly predict, but generalized ranges and concentrations should be quite damn close to the mark if I were to put any money on it.
Click to expand...

this week is not different at all as far as predictions go.

we've had 3 snow storms so far this year, and the weathermen have been completely wrong about all 3 so far. and that's not counting the "missed" one on friday. they need to just take the george costanza approach to these things now.

this has been a trend the past decade here. everyone around here jokes around about it now. they even had a thing on the news last night about how the grocery stores weren't packed before storms anymore, and i think alot of it is because everyone knows that it's a crapshoot with what the weathermen say.
 
purbeast0 said:
this week is not different at all as far as predictions go.

we've had 3 snow storms so far this year, and the weathermen have been completely wrong about all 3 so far. and that's not counting the "missed" one on friday. they need to just take the george costanza approach to these things now.

this has been a trend the past decade here. everyone around here jokes around about it now. they even had a thing on the news last night about how the grocery stores weren't packed before storms anymore, and i think alot of it is because everyone knows that it's a crapshoot with what the weathermen say.
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I'm wondering if part of the problem could be the size of the coverage area? You live in a larger city in Maryland? In the 80's, I was the DJ at a pair of radio stations; I had to do the news and weather throughout the day. "Currently 72 degrees and raining at our studios in Olean..." My phone lit up: "what are you talking about? It's not raining, it's sunny." Thankfully, satellite images and doppler radar being easily accessed helps people realize that what they see in their backyard isn't necessarily representative of everything in a 100 mile radius around them.
 
CraKaJaX said:
I agree with this though my POV might be skewed a bit. Going from Syracuse to Long Island I have to laugh. You would think the world is ending down here. The news this morning covered "BREAKING NEWS!" about how there is no bread or milk left at local grocery stores. I was just at the Dr's office - they're closing early today and already closed for tomorrow. The number of whiteout storms I drove through in Syracuse to get my ass to work is more than I can count on two hands in the 4 years I was there. Laughable really.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6zaVYWLTkU
 
purbeast0 said:
this week is not different at all as far as predictions go.

we've had 3 snow storms so far this year, and the weathermen have been completely wrong about all 3 so far. and that's not counting the "missed" one on friday. they need to just take the george costanza approach to these things now.

this has been a trend the past decade here. everyone around here jokes around about it now. they even had a thing on the news last night about how the grocery stores weren't packed before storms anymore, and i think alot of it is because everyone knows that it's a crapshoot with what the weathermen say.
Click to expand...

factoring into it is probably the fact that you remember the 3 days that the weatherman was wrong far more strongly than the 300 days that they were right.
 
loki8481 said:
factoring into it is probably the fact that you remember the 3 days that the weatherman was wrong far more strongly than the 300 days that they were right.
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there weren't snow storms to predict on the 300 other days they were right. i'm talking strictly about snow storms.
 
Newell Steamer said:
Not even noon,.. and it stopped snowing in the Big Apple.

We have maybe 3 inches on the ground?
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It hasn't exactly started yet.

Snowfall totals are through Wednesday. I think the worst of everything happens tomorrow. 50+ mph winds tomorrow.

- We ducked this storm with a dusting on the ground. 😛 Y'all gonna have all kinds of suck.

Edit: just took a closer look at the patterns and what the smart folks are saying. Yup, right now, the system isn't really even a storm. You could call it that, I suppose, but the real whopper develops as the central mass heads over the water and starts rapidly dropping in pressure as it combines with other patterns.
 
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