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Nor'easter truthers assemble!
By adamg on Thu, 03/16/2017 - 10:31am
Associated Press reports National Weather Service forecasters knew Monday that the nor'easter might not be all that, but kept up their original higher snowfall numbers to keep people from getting confused - and that that made sense because forecasting is still not 100% accurate.
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Comments
In the absence of war...
...create one.
Government Mistrust
Not updating the public with more accurate information because of concern over how people will handle that information just leads to more mistrust in government.
Anti-vaxxers, for example, see this story and may think, if the national weather service is willing to mislead the public, maybe the government is concealing an autism/vaccine link. For the greater good. To avoid "confusion."
Consider the counterfactual scenario
Storm is underpredicted. People go about their business. Storm develops differently.
1978 anyone?
Seems like weak reasoning.
Seems like weak reasoning. SCIENCE!?????
Rules are rules...
...inches are inches people can be wacky. The literal-minded, it's-obvious folk lack context.
That was and remains a damned difficult storm. We had limbs down and such, but more to the point, cleaning up from this was much harder than from a powdery dropping two or three times as deep. With the extreme heaviness, compounded with ice, sleet and rain, it was dreadful to clear walks and driveways. Some neighbors said their snowblowers can't handle stuff that wet and heavy.
The street plowers did their usual, nasty block-the-driveway joke. Then after the overnight extreme cold, clearing a path for the car was muscle breaking.
Tell the yardstick people their out-of-context judgments are not useful or meaningful. Harrumph.
When plowing where else is
When plowing where else is the snow supposed to go besides the curb line?
NOAA's Nor'easter lie restores my faith in "Climate Change"
The National Weather Service is part of NOAA. The same people who can't predict the next day's weather are considered infallible in their doomsday predictions of
Global Warming,rebranded as "Climate Change." Scary.Willful ignorance
The NWS predicts weather with a high but not perfect accuracy. If climate change predictions are even close to that good we are boned. Except people like you, who could slather themselves with clue bait and stagger through a clue forest teeming with clue wolves and not get a bite.
You think you know more about
You think you know more about the climate than thousands of climate scientists? Are you also clueless enough to think you could beat Lebron James in basketball?
NWS was spot on
As I pointed out in post the day prior to the storm, the NWS forecast had significantly reduced the snowfall totals and wind speeds. They had downgraded the classification from a blizzard a few days prior.
News media (Including UHub, BTW) were acting upon information that was several days outdated. The Boston Globe published graphics which were notable out of date. The NWS forecasts within 12-24 hours of the storm were largely correct.
Blame the local news networks for their desire to hype up the worst case predictions, not NWS for updating their products in a timely manor.
meteorologists
Many local meteorologists also predicted by Monday night that the snow totals would be less than originally forecast, for example:
https://twitter.com/PeteNBCBoston/status/841485863360045057
True that
There was a disconnect that rivaled our national political divide on Monday when it came to the snow. People were either in the 8 to 12 range (only slightly off on the lower bound) with a changeover to rain or fearing a storm of "historic proportions."
It was historic
Just not here. Montreal got absolutely clobbered.
They closed schools. THEY NEVER CLOSE SCHOOLS FOR WINTER.
Seconded.
Seconded.
NWS significantly revised their forecasts downward, and specifically discussed the transition to rain.
It's not their fault if people stop paying attention to updated information and continue to expect a storm "of historic proportions".
If that's true ....
.... why did the National Weather Service admit admit that they lied?
Maybe because the other
Maybe because the other offices (e.g. New York, Albany, etc.) didn't revise their totals down?
Maybe because it's better PR to just apologize than to argue?
...to keep people from
Why? Are we so stupid?
We can understand quantities and degree. They're afraid that we won't take a storm as seriously as they think we should if the forecast is 6-12" instead of 12-18". We can figure out that 6-12" of heavy, wet, freezing snow is bad enough, thanks.
All NWS accomplished with this is (a) made people a little less likely to believe them the next time, and (b) made it look like Chris Christie isn't a complete crank for complaining about them.
Yes.
Yes. Stupid, and litigious.
It's never as big as they say it is
Right, ladies? Haha corny jokes aside, it really is often over, or under estimated. I enjoyed the day off from work but I tend to operate under the expectation that the biggest storms often come without warning.
6.6 inches?
Kinda small to me.
I used to work on the theory that they overestimate storms, then Deflategate started, which coincided with our winter from hell.