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Fall Banter Thread


TauntonBlizzard2013

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exactly why the Met community meltdowns and blogs over crazy hyped up kids posting seasonal catastrophic winters needs to stop.

 

Seasonal forecasts from there are fine. Whatever. Most people in the general public think it's voodoo.

The problem is when you have kids sending out snow forecasts that go viral - and people actually believe them - it ruins all of our credibility. 

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Seasonal forecasts from there are fine. Whatever. Most people in the general public think it's voodoo.

The problem is when you have kids sending out snow forecasts that go viral - and people actually believe them - it ruins all of our credibility. 

 

This.  

 

Also when you have people posting model output snowfall graphics which spit out like 40''...this gets worse every year...not looking forward to what this winter will bring in that regards.  

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Seasonal forecasts from there are fine. Whatever. Most people in the general public think it's voodoo.

The problem is when you have kids sending out snow forecasts that go viral - and people actually believe them - it ruins all of our credibility.

certainly you Mets have a tough job in the credibility dept but seems things go even more viral when places like WAPO post about it. I think people forget very quickly, if those kids are posting wild stuff the day of then I guess it could have detrimental economic and social effect.
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certainly you Mets have a tough job in the credibility dept but seems things go even more viral when places like WAPO post about it. I think people forget very quickly, if those kids are posting wild stuff the day of then I guess it could have detrimental economic and social effect.

 

Yeah the issue IMO is that it feeds into the stereotype of "they always hype everything" and "they don't know what they're talking about". It's also difficult to cut through all the noise and BS with a reasonable forecast - a post I make on Facebook might get 4,000 shares - something from a kid forecasting 3 feet of snow might get 100,000 lol. 

 

We're all somewhat to blame... there are a lot of TV stations that don't even hire meteorologists and that cannot forecast. My industry has certainly fed into the issue.

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The public doesn't understand probabilities and don't want to see that. They generally want something that is quantifiable. The majority don't want to see say a 10% chance of 12 inches of snow, 30% of 6 and 90% of 1 inch. They want to know how much is going to fall by the time the storm is over. It's just human nature. All probabilities do is show uncertainty from the forecaster and create confusion

 

I agree to an extent. When you CAN give a deterministic solution, do it. I love ranges, hate probabilistic storm forecasts. Like in a winter storm, or a wind forecast, or tomorrow's forecast. But the reality is the science just might not be good enough to do a deterministic long range forecast yet.

 

 

But there is more to things whether it's just right or wrong, especially when you're talking about a field where the margin of error can be fairly high.  the issuance of probabilities gives exactly what the word indicates...the probability of an occurrence.  

 

I will say though, I don't exactly understand what is meant by the probabilities NOAA issued...for example, they have us >40% warmer...does that mean there is >40% chance of being warmer than normal or we will be 40% warmer than normal?  

 

Anyways, what you can do is say something like, there is a 70% chance of being colder than average...this indicates there is a pretty decent likelihood of being colder than average...however, say it ended up closer to normal or slightly above...you can still say the forecast was incorrect.  

 

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/seasonal_info.php

 

So Equal Chances is 33.3%, 33.3%, 33.3%...

40% above means 40% above, 33.33% Normal, 26.67% below.

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I agree to an extent. When you CAN give a deterministic solution, do it. I love ranges, hate probabilistic storm forecasts. Like in a winter storm, or a wind forecast, or tomorrow's forecast. But the reality is the science just might not be good enough to do a deterministic long range forecast yet.

 

 

 

http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/long_range/seasonal_info.php

 

So Equal Chances is 33.3%, 33.3%, 33.3%...

40% above means 40% above, 33.33% Normal, 26.67% below.

I see Ryan couldn't handle a winter discussion in the winter discussion thread and felt compelled to move it here lol. Must be boring in the mod forum.

Hopefully one day the industry will have confidence in issuing long range quantifiable forecasts

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Another warm one for the globe, warmest September on record. US remains an oasis of cool though relative to everywhere else it seems.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/planet-sees-warmest-september-ever-recorded-nasa-n225836

Chalk up another monthly temperature record: This was the warmest September globally in 134 years of data, new NASA numbers indicate. The average temperature on Earth was 58.6 degrees F (14.77 C) — surpassing the 2005 mark and 1.39 degrees F (0.77 C) above the 1951-1980 average for September, according to NASA’s monthly Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index. That follows a record month in August, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Weather.com noted that 2014 has the potential to be the world’s hottest on record.

But in the U.S., this was only the 26th warmest September in 120 years of record keeping, the data center reported, with an average temperature of 66.2 degrees F, 1.3 F above average. There were some hot spots: California had its warmest January-September period ever; Hilo, Hawaii, hit 93 degrees F to break a monthly record that had stood since 1951; and Cold Bay, Alaska, had its warmest September ever. But a Sept. 10-11 storm set records for earliest snowfall in some spots in the Rockies and Dakotas.

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Thanks--I really don't keep track of the dates of events like everyone else (of course, no one compares to Will who probably could report when I had my first flakes from that storm).

 

My favorite of that series is the depth on the ground as seen in the picnic table shot.

 

That storm pretty much peaked the snowpack in most places. Most areas had a relatively uniform 24-40" or so of snow NW of PYM. I say relatively because that's pretty dam uniform given the climate nuances of southern New England.

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Another warm one for the globe, warmest September on record. US remains an oasis of cool though relative to everywhere else it seems.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/environment/planet-sees-warmest-september-ever-recorded-nasa-n225836

Chalk up another monthly temperature record: This was the warmest September globally in 134 years of data, new NASA numbers indicate. The average temperature on Earth was 58.6 degrees F (14.77 C) — surpassing the 2005 mark and 1.39 degrees F (0.77 C) above the 1951-1980 average for September, according to NASA’s monthly Global Land-Ocean Temperature Index. That follows a record month in August, according to NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center. Weather.com noted that 2014 has the potential to be the world’s hottest on record.

But in the U.S., this was only the 26th warmest September in 120 years of record keeping, the data center reported, with an average temperature of 66.2 degrees F, 1.3 F above average. There were some hot spots: California had its warmest January-September period ever; Hilo, Hawaii, hit 93 degrees F to break a monthly record that had stood since 1951; and Cold Bay, Alaska, had its warmest September ever. But a Sept. 10-11 storm set records for earliest snowfall in some spots in the Rockies and Dakotas.

 

Firstly ... this is hardly as trivial as a banter-thread topic, imo.   Regardless of the old anthropogenic vs natural causes, the U.S. is being sheltered by awareness due to "polar vortexes" and this "cold oasis" thing -- a point I made myself during last winter and at a couple of times over the summer.  

 

Last January (2014) was the 4th warmest January since Global means have been scientifically recorded; yet this took place while the MW/GL and most of the U.S. for that matter suffered one of the harshest winters ever.  The very idea that September did a microcosm of the same result ... I think it is somewhat telling that the background canvas pattern is still persisting.

 

Another personal theory is that this pattern is super-imposed over a clad GW evolution, and this is what we've ended up with: A cold summer circulation type, that can only bring the mean temperatures closer to normal as opposed to severely below.   

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Firstly ... this is hardly as trivial as a banter-thread topic, imo.   Regardless of the old anthropogenic vs natural causes, the U.S. is being sheltered by awareness due to "polar vortexes" and this "cold oasis" thing -- a point I made myself during last winter and at a couple of times over the summer.  

 

Last January (2014) was the 4th warmest January since Global means have been scientifically recorded; yet this took place while the MW/GL and most of the U.S. for that matter suffered one of the harshest winters ever.  The very idea that September did a microcosm of the same result ... I think it is somewhat telling that the background canvas pattern is still persisting.

 

Another personal theory is that this pattern is super-imposed over a clad GW evolution, and this is what we've ended up with: A cold summer circulation type, that can only bring the mean temperatures closer to normal as opposed to severely below.   

 

Meh.  Leave it in the trivial banter thread.  :)

 

45.3/30

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Meh.  Leave it in the trivial banter thread.  :)

 

45.3/30

 

 

Yeah .. well  :)  that kind of apathy is the reason why there is such a belated response to humanity's self-induced apocalypse -- certainly some kind of biblical scaled population correction...

 

But meh,... let's just banter about it.   

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That storm pretty much peaked the snowpack in most places. Most areas had a relatively uniform 24-40" or so of snow NW of PYM. I say relatively because that's pretty dam uniform given the climate nuances of southern New England.

 

Those nuances were much in evidence in NNE, however, with most of Aroostook boasting single-digit snowpack well into Feb, and peaking with the March 7-8 dump.  Many central Maine locations reached their deepest in late Feb, the 28th at my place.

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