The hyperactive imaginations of the NWS, and the gullible hypecasts left in their wake

Yesterday, there was breathless anticipation when the National Weather Service declared a Winter Storm Warning for the entire metro region (and most of the mid-Atlantic). The media was flooded yesterday evening with the eagerness with which they typically greet any situation: if they can gin it up into a crisis, they will.

Guess what?

It rained.

Last year, after a couple of busted forecasts (hypecasts, I'm going to start calling them), decided to filter the forecasts through a pair of equations:

S = S_fh - 2

which effectively takes the upper forecast amount of snowfall for my area (as determined by the NWS, rendered above as S_fh, and subtracts two from it. The result, S, is the actual snowfall we will get.

There was a second equation:

T = T_f + (T_f * 0.1)

which takes the forecast temperature (high or low, it doesn't matter) and adds 10% onto it.

Flashback to 7:30 last night:

I'm testing out my Cynical Winter Weather Equations for this WSW. I came up with:

S = 1, and T = 33

Um.

Wait... T = 33?!? That means that whatever falls isn't going to stick to much of anything! So even if S > 0, it wouldn't matter. But there's a Winter Storm Warning! Surely that means that "a winter storm is occurring or is about to occur in the area"! They wouldn't be so foolhardy as to excite an excitable region for the prospect of "3 or more inches of snow with a large accumulation of ice" unless it was warranted. If it weren't warranted, they certainly would have issued something less dire-sounding, like a Freezing Rain Advisory. Surely my Cynical Winter Weather Equations are just too cynical. I'm going to go to sleep tonight comfortable in the knowledge that there will be plenty of snow and ice to go around.

Ok, it didn't happen exactly like that. I actually wasn't very surprised (but still disappointed) when I awoke at 6:00 this morning, stepped outside and saw about 1/8 of an inch of pathetic looking slushy slop on our front steps and wet roads and traffic moving at its normal, ridiculous speed down RIAve and NorthCap.

I mean, really. Is this what qualifies as a winter storm in these parts? A rain storm (and not a very bad one at that) that happens in "winter".

Dear National Weather Service: knock this shit off.

Dear media hypecasters: knock this shit off.

The point of all this is that whenever they're going to issue any sort of winter weather advisory from here on out, I'm plugging their guesstimates into my CWWE and behaving off of that data. And now, you can rest in the knowledge that they've undergone real-world testing, and can use them too!

ELP 016

Taken from my front porch just minutes ago:



The pot of gold, apparently, lies in Eckington. Never woulda guessed that one.

ELP 013.1: Just a light little something to whet the appetite

There wasn't much to this storm, but at least I got to use the shovel (for the first time in nearly two years).

The access roads for NorthCap got covered, as did pretty much everything in the neighborhood. But the main line remained largely snow-free (slight accumulation between the traffic lanes), and except for the last hurrah burst between 5 and 6 this evening, Rhode Island was only wet.

A good start, but it better not be the only thing on the menu.

One final pic:

ELP 013: First snow of the year!!!

Yeah baby! Live- and photoblogging SNOW. Whodathunkit? [4:00pm update below]

First images...





Note in this one that you can already see signs of accumulation... tire tracks on the street.



4:00pm Update

ELP 009

My first attempt at taking photographs of lightning. I took 188 pictures tonight from the back porch, and this one's the best of the batch. (Clicky to make it bigger.)

Current Conditions

So, I have WeatherFox installed in my browser, which put a line of weather info at the top of the window, letting me know what I could just as easily find out by turning my head 90 degrees. But why go to all that trouble when the info's already here on the screen.

At any rate, WeatherFox tells one what the conditions are outside right now. I find what it's telling me about the outdoors right now a little odd.



That is all.