February 2026 OBS & Discussion

[golfer07840]

1 hour ago, weatherpruf said:

the whole winter was mild especially compared to the year before which was epic; this was the only major storm in 95, included in kocin's book; i remember it was a saturday so impacts were less; it would be the last storm i would use a shovel on; december 95 i bought a snow blower and guess what, we had a major snow two days later....ya'll know what the rest of that winter was like; the blower was good for up to 12 inches......i thought that would be plenty.....wrong...

So strange I barely remember that storm, probably because it was on a Saturday. 

And the winter of '95/'96 was so long. It was in the high 30s/low 40s until mid April and felt like it would never end. 

My GF, now wife, and I went to Florida in March and we basked in the 80 degrees for 10 days. We come back and it was freezing rain and 38. Awful 

[weatherpruf]

2 hours ago, Monty said:

I wouldn't weenie this post but I don't find it compelling. Dave is a proud, loud, card carrying Democrat and I feel his weather opinions are biased by his political opinions. If I am reading his graphic correctly there are 18 fewer balloons going up over the USA every day than before the budget cuts, and 5 of them are downstream from us. How many more private balloons are going up today compared to 5 or 10 years ago with data available to the globals? Have sattelite density and observational quality improved at all? Are the number and quality of plane sensors unchanged? What percentage of reduction does this represent when accounting for balloon soundings globally? 

"Fewer balloons is bad and ruining modeling" is a pretty simple take on the matter. 

As another poster said we've seen some abysmal model performance over the last five years, particularly the GFS since its latest "upgrade." These failures predate NOAA budget cuts. 

the effects are noticeable in all agencies and have been written about extensively in respected publications, at least the ones not owned by murdoch or bezos.....a professional has listed his reasons and you have answered with an anecdote from a poster here. 

[weatherpruf]

2 hours ago, golfer07840 said:

So strange I barely remember that storm, probably because it was on a Saturday. 

And the winter of '95/'96 was so long. It was in the high 30s/low 40s until mid April and felt like it would never end. 

My GF, now wife, and I went to Florida in March and we basked in the 80 degrees for 10 days. We come back and it was freezing rain and 38. Awful 

it also came on the heels of 94; people had gotten used to big snows the year before, and many were talking about the storm coming and were ready for it. and that was basically it for the whole winter.

[WeatherGeek2025]

note the gfs ai shows some frozen precip friday night