Oh, I don't mind the snow. *nuzzles back* It's quite beautiful and I'll have some daylight photos shortly, just shot a bunch of them.
It just irritates me that a government service agency is so wrapped up in politics and revising forecasts to keep people happy that it ignores the truth. Most people hate snow and dread it with great horror (I don't understand this but it's true) and therefore it's considered politically bad to deliver bad news. Instead they revise and revise and try to "minimize the damage" instead of just reporting the truth.
My unofficial measurements by shoving a yardstick into the snow show a range of 6 to 10 inches here, probably averaging out to about 7. It'll be interesting to see the actual accumulated snowfall map that comes out later this morning. I'll bet we still have only 4 inches because that was the extreme edge of their prediction.
Meteorology is a difficult science. It is not within our grasp, yet, to model every particle in the atmosphere, every bit of EM radiation from the sun, every cubic nanometer of shadows, sunlight refracted off the moon, etc. It would take a computer the size of Earth to accurately model the weather of Earth ... I'd be surprised if they found a way to get it right all of the time. In vast, flat areas, its hard not to imagine that the smallest of errors become monumental inaccuracies.
Oh sure. Meteorology is a minor interest of mine, and I understand all that. But my take on it is that they shouldn't pretend that their forecasts are more accurate than they actually are. If you go to the NOAA web site, for instance, they pretend to give "spot forecasts" for areas as small as a few square miles. This is mostly just absurd
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Me and my furry-tolerant friend went out last night to the hobby shop. The new Lionel catalog was just released. SQUEE! Anyway, it wasn't too bad until we hit the O'Hare oasis. Then it got icy. The clerk at the near-empty shop said "Only mad dogs and model railroaders would come out on a night like this." I might qualify for both those catagories, I thought to myself. After looking at the catalog all evening, I spent the night dreaming of miniature iron horses. Good stuff.
Lionel. Gosh, somewhere along the way years ago I had the impression that the Lionel name was dead and nothing new was being made under it. Do they still use those funny third rail type tracks or have they graduated to something more realistic looking? :)
I'll have to check. I assume the catalog is probably something I could buy or order online somewhere?
There was a lot of news a couple years back when the Lionel Corporation finally went under. While it originally was Lionel's original company, the line of model trains had at least three owners by then, the first was MPC, a subsidiary of General Mills. then various investors have been operating it to various degrees of success. Right now, the product line is good, they've bought the rights to American Flyer in the '80s, but are going through a lawsuit from a competitor. http://www.lionel.com will take you there, and you can peruse their on-line catalog. I'm a scale modeler, and some of my peers look down at Lionel, as they make "toy" trains. But I never forgot my roots. (Which were America Flyer)
Speaking as someone with a degree in meteorology, let me say that it is extremely difficult to predict snowfall amounts. One inch of snow equals a tenth of an inch of rain, so not only do we need to say that water is going to fall from the sky, we need to say precisely how much of it is going to fall. A quarter-inch is the difference between 2-3 inches of snow. That's pretty tough to say, as it isn't being carried around by someone in a tank up there
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I do appreciate the vagaries of forecasting, and I don't mind being told "We're not certain which way it will go," or "One computer model says this, the other says that." But I object to being told that it is not going to snow when it's coming down in huge slushballs. Or that the total accumulation will not exceed 3 inches when there are already 5 new inches on the ground. That's just... inexcusable in my opinion.
The Detroit weather office is claiming that the storm tracked farther north than they predicted, so the snow went farther north. We ended up with maybe one inch along the north Detroit city limits where they were saying several before. We actually had rain till about 5 a.m., instead of about 1 a.m. like they predicted. I knew we'd get less snow than farther north, but I did expect to have to shovel today. I could probably wear my tennis shoes, in fact.
Over the holidays, I saw a lot of home weather stations for sale in the stores. I wonder if that's because we should start relying on ourselves for weather forecasting?
I got one of those for Christmas in fact. It's not that great for predicting, but at least it tells you what the weather service seems to have forgotten: what's actually happening outdoors. My big peeve with them the last few years has always been the same. They are completely running off their imaginations. They will say, for instance, that it's raining in Marengo when I can look out my window and see the sun. Or it's sunny when the clouds are so thick you expect them to be hit by lightning at any moment.
Nobody ever really takes weather forecasting seriously in New England because most of the time, the forecast is wrong. When they forecast "heavy snow," we all know it could be anything from an inch to 3 feet, and it could be snow, sleet, rain, or anything inbetween. I don't see it as a fault in meteorology, but rather the unpredictable nature of the weather in the Northeast.
Unfortunately, NOAA, like everything else, is a victim of budget cuts. They've closed a lot of local weather offices and replaced human weather spotters with ASOS stations (Automated Something Something Stations).
I don't mind the forecast being wrong as long as they are honest about their doubts. Saying "40 percent chance of" makes sense to me. My complaint is saying "It's a beautiful sunny day" when in fact it's pouring cats and dogs. I keep seeing them do this. They spend all their time in windowless bunkers relying on computer models, and never step outside I guess
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It just irritates me that a government service agency is so wrapped up in politics and revising forecasts to keep people happy that it ignores the truth. Most people hate snow and dread it with great horror (I don't understand this but it's true) and therefore it's considered politically bad to deliver bad news. Instead they revise and revise and try to "minimize the damage" instead of just reporting the truth.
My unofficial measurements by shoving a yardstick into the snow show a range of 6 to 10 inches here, probably averaging out to about 7. It'll be interesting to see the actual accumulated snowfall map that comes out later this morning. I'll bet we still have only 4 inches because that was the extreme edge of their prediction.
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I'll have to check. I assume the catalog is probably something I could buy or order online somewhere?
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I'm a scale modeler, and some of my peers look down at Lionel, as they make "toy" trains. But I never forgot my roots. (Which were America Flyer)
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Over the holidays, I saw a lot of home weather stations for sale in the stores. I wonder if that's because we should start relying on ourselves for weather forecasting?
Reply
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Unfortunately, NOAA, like everything else, is a victim of budget cuts. They've closed a lot of local weather offices and replaced human weather spotters with ASOS stations (Automated Something Something Stations).
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