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!

More pirate-y goodness.

I'm so happy this is catching on.

Arrrrr! Lookit me hook!

Just a reminder: Today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. So go out and hug your local pirate. Just be careful of the hook.

In the vein of this most treasured of holidays, I offer the Flying Spaghetti Monster. While not specifically germane to Nat'l TLaP Day, the author has found a freakish correlation between the population of pirates and global warming. (FSM has a whole other type of germane-ness to stuff, but I'll let you discover that on your own.)