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March 3-5 Event


windvane

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Alright... I think my early call for TTN is 5-10".  Nothing to fly home about.  Bust potential rather large of course given some guidance has less and other guidance is near the top end of that.  I hate making a call 3 days out.

 

 

If anyone cares, my totally unofficial, uneducated and un-endorsed thoughts for the Trenton area are not changed from yesterday, I'm keeping the 5-10 for now, but leaning on the low side of that. 

 

 

Yeah if the trend continues much more my forecast will be in the trash tomorrow.

 

 

Euro is south.

 

I'm cutting my TTN expectations to 2-5 inches.

 

Should've cut it to 0.2-0.5 inches....  ugh what a bust!  :axe:

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March 2001's little brother. At least there was a little warning, but even with the trend, pretty major miss by most accounts.

you would have expected the north trend as happens often with these waa events. Also the time of year in a normal year would have come north imo. With this storm I didn't account for the stronger than normal PV which is the trend this season
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you would have expected the north trend as happens often with these waa events. Also the time of year in a normal year would have come north imo. With this storm I didn't account for the stronger than normal PV which is the trend this season

Ralph, wasn't it supposed to retreat some? Three days out with all of the anticipation many were expecting the pv to retreat, or at least move NE.

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A lot of Monday morning quarterbacking going on here, as if it should've been easy to predict 1-2" for NYC and 3-4" for Philly 2 days ago or even yesterday. Sure, there was a trend south, but extrapolating to where it looks like we're going to end up would've been an unusual and risky call. Assuming things play out as currently expected now (I won't say it's over till it's over), I don't think there was a professional meteorologist out there, with real forecast responsibilities, who was predicting less than 4-6" for NYC or less than 6-8" for Philly more than 24 hours ago (or even 12 hours ago) and certainly not 48 hours ago. That, to me, says that while, on the surface, this is a bust, if it was so obvious, how come it took so long for all of the pros to lower their forecast accumulations, especially in the last 12 hours? Was there some sort of weird groupthink going on?

 

 

The southward trend started on my last midnight shift on Friday. But, its tough enough to forecast conditions as is, then to start forecasting where the models will trend to 24 to 48 hours from now and base your forecast on what you think they will show. This is especially true before the 00z run Sunday when the last short wave was still offshore. This one was the opposite of most this winter where there was the perpetual northwest trend. Its nice to have stability, but the truth is most winters are not 2009-10 and most of the time the busts in March have to do with unfavorable accumulation parameters which knock ratios down, not being in so deep in the cold air. As Ray posted I am personally loathe to whipsawing a forecast downward until there is over 90% certainty that there is no way a mistake has been made.  This first week of March has had its share of busts over the last 10 to 15 years, not the same causes, but seems to be a tough time of year to get it close.

Tony - thanks for weighing in.  I still find the NWS to be the best among all my sources, but given the chaotic, highly uncertain nature of weather and the difficulties forecasting it, I'm pretty sure there are always going to be busts, especially in situations like this, where the models were moving in one direction nearly the entire last 2 days - much less chance for error when the oscillations are like a dampening sine wave, but all zeroed in on an unchanging mean, if you get my drift - here, the mean (the outcome) was always moving.  Tough to get those right. 

 

As an aside, does anyone on this board know why I have to use "multiquote" to quote a thread of more than one post - it's so annoying to have to go find multiple posts on different pages, instead of just adding one more reply to a thread, like I can do on some other boards.  That and I've still never figured out how to get post time stamps to not be "46 minutes ago" when the post is under 60 minutes old - hate that - would much rather it just say the post was at 2:27 am EST. 

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Should've cut it to 0.2-0.5 inches....  ugh what a bust!  :axe:

 

lol....it's the weather, sooner or later it will humble you...

 

You guys do great. I wouldn't overreact to all the hue and cry and hand wringing over the "busted forecast". Definitely a learning opportunity, and also a reminder, if anyone needed one, that we aren't perfect.

 

I like to aim high, aim for perfection, in my own work and endeavors, but have been reminded over the years that we will usually (always?) come up somewhere short of perfect. That doesn't mean we don't try, and beat ourselves up a bit when we do come up short, just like you did in this post. That's okay (within reason :lol:), because it means you care. The upside is learning from the experience.

 

In other words, keep up the good work :thumbsup:.

 

And thanks so much for hanging with us snow weenies during an event - it is greatly appreciated.

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