IsentropicLift Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Instead of clogging up a storm discussion thread with talk about weather and social media sites I figured it would be better to make a thread to discuss it. In the world we live in today everyone has access to computer modeling. You can't stop it. Everyone, or just about everyone is also on FB and Twitter. The combination is both frustrating and potentially damaging. It's irresponsible to post snowfall accumulation maps on social media sites, particularly something as stupid as an EPS control run total snow map. It spreads like wildfire and causes nothing but headaches for the real people responsible for issuing forecasts. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rygar Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Kaboom was awful, I agree fully. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
weathermedic Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I'm the local "weather geek" at my job. Several of my co-workers and my boss started asking me about this when it first hit social media and some TV news. I told them that it is way too early to tell anything just yet. There is a possibility of a storm somewhere along the east coast. We will know more if/when towards the end of the week. My boss then asked me what the European model showed. That started when media started naming that model as the one showing that Sandy will be a direct hit on the U.S. I think the public has been wrongfully educated by these instances. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
earthlight Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Wrote this: http://www.nymetroweather.com/2014/01/30/understanding-difference-potential-hype/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TauntonBlizzard2013 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 It truly is scary how one person posting an image like that, can affect the entire population of the northeast. It spreads like wildfire. I've had multiple people come to me at work saying we wre getting 2-3 feet of snow this weekend. It spreads to anyone and everyone. It takes one person, and in a day, anybody who is on twitter has seen it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJO812 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 All my friends are getting ready for the 30 inches this weekend . Stupid media hype. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormlover74 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 It truly is scary how one person posting an image like that, can affect the entire population of the northeast. It spreads like wildfire. I've had multiple people come to me at work saying we wre getting 2-3 feet of snow this weekend. It spreads to anyone and everyone. It takes one person, and in a day, anybody who is on twitter has seen it. Absolutely. Then that model printout from last years storm started making the rounds on gawker. The 30" vs. 3" side by side maps. All it takes is one person with a decent amount of facebook or twitter followers to post it and it just explodes. Because people don't read or understand, even a disclaimer like 'this is not my forecast just what one particular model is showing' isn't good enough. People just need to stop posting anything like that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormlover74 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 All my friends are getting ready for the 30 inches this weekend . Stupid media hype. No media hype. One idiot combined with social media. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JERSEYSNOWROB Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 All my friends are getting ready for the 30 inches this weekend . Stupid media hype. People were already making alternative plans for both business and pleasure for the weekend into Monday! ha ha ha Crazy! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsentropicLift Posted February 6, 2014 Author Share Posted February 6, 2014 I wouldn't even post a map showing 30" accumulations if it was the day before the storm. It's not my job to give forecasts. That's up to the professionals that know a hell of a lot more than I do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
IsentropicLift Posted February 6, 2014 Author Share Posted February 6, 2014 And one of the sadder things will be if we get a moderate or light event from the inverted trough. People will blame the Mets for being way overdone on snowfall forecasts. Watch and see. In spite of the fact that it's two different systems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Weathergun Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 It's get more frustrating to communicate, because even though were not getting monster snowstorm this weekend, you still have some snow in the forecast. It's tougher for the general public to understand the difference between monster or moderate event. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJO812 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 No media hype. One idiot combined with social media. I know who started it. People were already making alternative plans for both business and pleasure for the weekend into Monday! ha ha ha Crazy! I know lol. The snow is the big topic in my precinct. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chietanen Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 It happens in many other situations too, when something that is untrue shows up on social media and goes viral. The best example I can think of is when rumors start of a celebrity dying or some celebrity couple getting divorced. Honestly, what should happen is that these Facebook pages that pertain to an important aspect of life, let's say health, news, weather, should be somewhat regulated. These weather pages on Facebook have huge followings and the people who run them have nobody to answer to. For example, last time I checked Tri-State Weather had over 90,000 likes and the local guy who does it in my area has over 60,000 likes. These guys that I mentioned actually do an amazing job and don't hype storms at all, my point is that having a well liked Facebook page is a very powerful thing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PB GFI Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 This is why these stocks trade at high multiples ie FB, TWTR ( off 14 bucks today ) ,they reach so many so fast . Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormlover74 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I know who started it. I know lol. The snow is the big topic in my precinct. But this is one case where I dont really blame the media. I'm not sure what the tv weather personalities said about it but honestly its not their job to address it, as long as they aren't hyping themselves. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormlover74 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 This is why these stocks trade at high multiples ie FB, TWTR ( off 14 bucks today ) ,they reach so many so fast . DT posted yesterday that facebook would be unavailable on February 29th, 30th and 31st and people went nuts Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormlover74 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I wouldn't even post a map showing 30" accumulations if it was the day before the storm. It's not my job to give forecasts. That's up to the professionals that know a hell of a lot more than I do. No maps should ever be posted unless you're using it to justify your own forecast. Its way too confusing for the general public to understand the difference, sad as that may be. People see pretty pink colors showing 2 feet of snow and they don't hear or see anything that follows Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hailstorm Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I know who started it. I know lol. The snow is the big topic in my precinct. Mikehobbyist? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ralph Wiggum Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Mikehobbyist? no, a former member of the phl subforum... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chietanen Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Did you guys read JB tweeting about the Mt. Holly briefing? Basically called them out for missing the Monday snow on Friday. That storm first showed on Thursday I believe, and was initially modeled to be either a near miss or a nuisance event. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pazzo83 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Instead of clogging up a storm discussion thread with talk about weather and social media sites I figured it would be better to make a thread to discuss it. In the world we live in today everyone has access to computer modeling. You can't stop it. Everyone, or just about everyone is also on FB and Twitter. The combination is both frustrating and potentially damaging. It's irresponsible to post snowfall accumulation maps on social media sites, particularly something as stupid as an EPS control run total snow map. It spreads like wildfire and causes nothing but headaches for the real people responsible for issuing forecasts. I couldn't agree with this sentiment more. Instant access to information for all isn't always a good thing, like when you see people posting 384hr GFS maps on Facebook. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormlover74 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Did you guys read JB tweeting about the Mt. Holly briefing? Basically called them out for missing the Monday snow on Friday. That storm first showed on Thursday I believe, and was initially modeled to be either a near miss or a nuisance event. So who will call him out if our big weekend storm that he said would still happen goes OTS? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pazzo83 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 People were already making alternative plans for both business and pleasure for the weekend into Monday! ha ha ha Crazy! That's the scary thing, this actually materially impacts commerce. It's terrible. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pazzo83 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 I think we need to make a concerted effort to educate people on the borderline unfathomable complexity of the atmosphere, and how consequently we don't have near the computing power yet to accurately model it that far into the future. Nate Silver wrote a great piece in his 538 blog a year or two back about meteorology, big data, and high-performance computing (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/09/magazine/the-weatherman-is-not-a-moron.html?pagewanted=all). I wanted to start a thread on this particular point some time back, but I figured I would wait until after winter. According to the article (mets, feel free to correct), the atmosphere has something on the order of 1044 molecules. We'd have to be able to sample and model every single one in order to totally model the atmosphere for use in future prediction. Given the non-linear nature of the atmosphere, this would require (assuming we could actually sample every single one, a feat virtually impossible as we know it today) processing power well beyond what we have currently. The fastest computer in the world right now is in China, and has achieved approximately 30 petaFLOPS, or 30 quadrillion floating point ops per second. We are projected to reach exascale computing sometime around 2020 (exascale computing = 1 exaFLOPS, or 1 quintillion floating point operations per second). I think if we can get up to around 100 exaFLOPS, we might have the capacity to model everything, but realistically with current silicon-based chip technology that won't be possible. Luckily work being done with carbon nanotubes and graphene will hopefully help us move past the silicon-chip era. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stormlover74 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Did you guys read JB tweeting about the Mt. Holly briefing? Basically called them out for missing the Monday snow on Friday. That storm first showed on Thursday I believe, and was initially modeled to be either a near miss or a nuisance event. The worst part is JB defending the posting of the 30" snow map saying its not the same as yelling fire in a movie theatre...uhh yeah it kinda is Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forkyfork Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 bastardi and ryan maue are ruining meteorology Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chietanen Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Perhaps the NWS needs a greater presence on social media. The only people seeing these briefings about social media hype are weather geeks like us. Meanwhile, millions of people see a 384 hr Euro control map showing 40" of snow, or an old RPM model run from last year showing 30" in NYC and panic sets in. Just to use the local Facebook weather page as an example here, he has over 60,000 followers, while the NWS Albany (which covers my area) has 10,000. A concerted effort by the NWS to increase their social media exposure and then in turn use that power to educate the masses about long range weather forecasting might be beneficial. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJO812 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 bastardi and ryan maue are ruining meteorology Weatherboy posted his map which had areas getting 30 inches this Sunday. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MJO812 Posted February 6, 2014 Share Posted February 6, 2014 Meteorologist Mike Faveretta from News 12 Brooklyn Out to Sea?"Not so fast…before we write off Sunday's storm just because some "models" say so, let's remember what has happened for almost every snow storm this past season.7 days before: the forecast looked disastrous with a monster storm.4-5 days before: the storm seems to "disappear" on the weather charts.3 days before (now): the storm is re-appears, but it stays just to our South.1-2 days before: the storm jogs further and further north, with every 12 hour update, slapping us with last-minute, largely unexpected snow.Are we going to get fooled again? No! Let's err on the cautious side and keep snow in the forecast for Sunday. Will it be monstrous? Probably not, but it will still snow during the latter half of the weekend, beginning Saturday night at the earliest. I'm thinking manageable: like a 3-6" deal, ending Sunday. If all goes to plan, kids and parents should be able to get to school and work without much hassle on Monday.Wednesday could be more significant. More on that tomorrow.mike" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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