I just traded quick tweets with Ryan Hanrahan at NBC30.
geofffox: @ryanhanrahan How’d you do on this one so far?
ryanhanrahan: @geofffox Not bad – all about where fgen sets up. Haves and have nots. Some towns will get hit hard others won’t.
I don’t know about Ryan, but these were the nights I dreaded! I was on-the-air 28 years in Connecticut. It didn’t take long to realize how unhappy people are when a snow forecast goes wrong.
Ouch. Some were brutal.
Even when right I’ve been blamed for the forecast on other stations and the Weather Channel and by people who just misheard!
Forecasts aren’t blown because you haven’t worked hard enough. Predictions go south when bad guidance (computer models) leads you astray. By and large computers are superior to humans in quantifiable solutions to tough atmospheric problems.. That makes it difficult to discard them in pressure situations.
Mid-storm I was like a caged animal. I’m sure that didn’t make me a dream co-worker.
Sadly, no matter what I did it was never 100% right. There was always an outlier. Frustrating.
Post-Sandy the federal government allocated significant resources to beef up our weather computing power. Implementation is excruciatingly slow. Forecasts will improve a little. The low hanging fruit has already been picked.