weatherwiz

There's research out there (but yeah you could argue lack of sample size) which shows a great deal of trust within weather forecasts, particularly with weather forecasts from local outlets.

Just because the lead story was on the storm does not mean it was hyped, majority of the news audience tunes in for weather. Weather is a significant portion of news ratings. Cancelling events ultimately is the decision of the person or people responsible for that decision. Even I year ago I laughed at how schools cancel so easily now, I made a post slamming schools because of closing for a potential wind event last year. However, a post from FXWX swayed my mind a bit and the various research papers I've read in this Weather and Society course I am currently taking has altered my perspective. There is an increasing trend for people to be on the safe side and one of the reasons for these decisions is people comparing risk versus "reward". Also, there is a greater trust in weather forecasts these days which factors in as well.

I don't recall any local TV stations hyping anything up. Like i said, forecast was very well communicated. Multiple days (several really) of communication allowed people to prepare, particularly emergency management and utility companies. Because of the staging and extra resources Eversouce dedicated ahead of time power outages were resolved in a timely manner and this helped keep numbers at a reasonable level. There was also some significant coastal flooding as advertised and you'd have to think those along the coast prepared and anticipated on this and impact the best they could. I don't recall any outlets out there stating any storm impacts being more extreme that what occurred.

There are always going to be areas which either meet forecast expectations, receive greater storm impact than forecast, or end up with lesser impact than forecast. From a forecasting perspective there are many situations where a forecaster can have an idea of where greater impacts/lesser impacts are more likely, however, it becomes a great challenge presenting that and conveying that to the general public. There are also situations where this is highly dependent on small-scale processes related to exact storm evolution.

For an anomalous storm (relative to the time of year) and some of the challenges among forecast guidance, this was an extremely well forecast storm and communicated quite well.

or in 3 months it will be the only one showing a blizzard and say it must be onto something

The GFS is virtually unusable

50 knots showing up at 925

Probably going to start ramping up the flooding potential

RAP is pretty impressive. Even starts cranking the LLJ a bit earlier than some of the other guidance.

"meh lightning hit the house and blew out the outlets in every room but the bathroom was fine".

House gone tonight?

There's a giant spinner south of Long Island

HWW for CT shoreline

One thing to keep in mind too is as the surface pressure lowers as the storm continues to deepen and push north, 950mb isn't going to be particularly far from the surface...so much less vertical distance needed to reach and mix. Any inversion may end up being minute anyways, in fact, may not even be much of a negator. We're seeing good gusts 30-50 mph which really isn't anything different from what's just above the deck.