capitalweather

8 minutes ago, Wetbulbs88 said:

What you’re saying makes no sense. We can’t even figure out what’s happening less than 48 hours from now. But you want someone to act like they know? To what end?

The difference between them and you is they don’t care if they can ‘say they got it right’. They’re just trying to help people. You’re having a contest in your head that has no basis in reality. In fact it’s the kind of non nuanced competitiveness that people demand that only makes it seem like the technology of meteorology is better than it actually is, this perpetually pissing people off and making them feel like the whole system is less reliable. Because that’s what happens when people ‘stick to their guns’ to fulfill their sense of ego. 

This is exactly right... Our objective to explain to people the range of possibilities.... while also giving them a sense of what we think is most likely, based on our experience/analysis. This is all in the spirit of helping them prepare and make decisions, manage expectations, understand the best/worst case, etc. Of course, we aim to get it right and we take pride when we nail a tough forecast... But ultimately, our goal is to serve our audience and make them understand the forecast and complexities so they'll be ready whatever happens.

5 minutes ago, yoda said:

no... the idea is to make ONE call.

If you make 3, then you can be right all the time - that's the problem

 

CWG can say they were right if we get 4-6 because of their "boom"

CWG can say they were right if we get 2-4 because that was their "call"

CWG can say they were right if we get 1" because that was their "bust"

This is just nonsense. We grade ourselves and put most of our emphasis on our most likely call -- not the boom/bust which is the fine print. The boom and bust are just provided so people understand the full range of possibilities and how our forecast could go wrong. Go back and read any of the postmortems we've written over the last 5-10 years in which we've evaluated our snow forecasts after the fact. We hold ourselves accountable to our most likely call. Our approach has been praised by the top people in the profession.

16 minutes ago, caviman2201 said:

Except they're supposed to tell me something I don't know by looking at the spread on TT...

Um-- we issued a map for 1-3" along with detailed discussion and fully explain why our forecast is what it is. and we give boom/bust scenarios because that's the responsible, scientific thing to do when you have an uncertain situation...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/weather/2021/02/05/washington-dc-snow-superbowl/