One month ago, the Weather Channel predicted, "February could be warmer than average in the Southern Plains and parts of the East."
12 days later, Punxsutawney Phil predicted 6 more weeks of winter.
Now I have done a lot of foolish things in life. My mistakes are many. Regrets, frankly I have quite a few. But I have never, ever been owned by a groundhog.
The Weather Channel on the other hand, well, its forecast speaks for itself.
On January 21, it said, "February 2021 may be warmer than average across much of the United States from the South to the Northeast, according to the latest outlook from The Weather Company, an IBM Business."
The Weather Channel forecast was chock full of science and computer-driven data.
It said, "February's forecast shows far-above-average temperatures are possible across most of the Northeast, as well as the Southern Plains. Above-average temperatures are also expected in parts of the Midwest, Southeast and Southwest."
The channel's map showed most of Texas, Oklahoma, and New Mexico in deep red as things would get hot, hot, hot.
Its forecast said, "Winter, so far, has been a relative non-event in parts of the northern U.S.
"A persistently strong Pacific jet stream has spread warmer-than-average air into much of Canada and the northern states from the Northwest to the Plains, Great Lakes and New England.
"Some cities from Seattle to Caribou, Maine, have had a record-warm start to winter."
Break out the suntan lotion. Who needs Cancun when it is bikini weather in Dallas and Houston?
Todd Crawford, chief meteorologist with The Weather Company, said, "Lingering La Niña conditions are typically associated with hotter spring and summer outcomes. We think that spring and early summer will be unusually warm and dry across the western and central U.S."
Armed with all these maps and data, the Weather Channel blew its February
With only a shadow and a German legend to go by, the groundhog got it right.
But don't sad. Things are looking up. The Weather Channel predicted on January 21 a much warmer March.
I mean the meteorologists cannot be wrong again.
Can they?
Heh, heh, hehhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
ReplyDeleteBummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmerrrrrrrrr.
Weather gets ya when ya ain't lookin' out...
WC was just jealous of the All Time Champ:
Deletehttps://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-24713504
In 1968, weathermen could predict the weather 3 days in advance with an accuracy around 80%. Now more than 50 years later, with better computers, computer modeling, weather satellites, and a better understanding of weather, weathermen can predict the weather 3 days in advance with an accuracy of about 80%!
ReplyDeleteNo, we can do a lot better since we track the jet stream.
DeleteAs a pilot, I can get an accurate aviation forecast about six hours ahead. After that, the reliability curve slopes off rapidly.
DeleteMy major in college was Economics. There was a saying around the Department: "Economists and weathermen will eventually be able to predict the past."
DeleteShort-term reliability may be unchanged, but the forecasts from 3-6 days out were much *more* reliable when I was a child in the 1970's than they are now. We have lost at least one weather satellite since then.
DeleteWeather Channel goofed again --- predicted that Big Jock would have contradicted Edutcher with his usual feeble bombast. As of 02/21/21 8:00 pm, it appears that that storm has petered out.
DeleteThe best thing about Groundhog Day is the funny, lovely movie starring Andie McDowell and Bill Murray.
ReplyDeleteThe Weather Channel? Hardly ever saw weather on it back when I still had cable.
ReplyDeleteAs usual, you weren't paying attention, Jeffery.
DeleteAs usual, you’re drunk on koolaide, zealot.
DeleteNow just a minute there Don. February ain't over yet, so the forecast for Texas could still be correct.
ReplyDeleteAs Dave Burge ("Iowahawk") has pointed out, if the high temperature in Austin is 122F every day for the rest of the month, The Weather Channel forecast will be accurate.
(BTW, around here, the annual prize for the year's most outstanding work of fiction always goes to "The Five-Day Forecast.")
The five day forecast changes every 10 minutes. I am embarrassed for IBM that they are associated with the Weather Channel (Web version only).
DeleteIBM was a great company back in the 1960s and 1970s, but turned itself into an embarrassment after that - and still is.
DeleteSadly, Intel seems to be following the same path to perdition on a 30 year time step... but that's another story...
See NY Post Sunday 02/21/21 for the wrap-up on the formerly "great" (not if you worked for them they weren't!) General Electric. The only thing it didn't cover was the GE Capital (formerly GE Credit) department leading the self-destruction,
DeleteI call them WEATHER LIARS! But honestly, how can they predict the future that far in advance when they barely get it right for a day or two? Our advances in radar and satellites has certainly improved SHORT RANGE forecasts, but anything beyond two days is just a GUESS! I've planned many outdoor events per the Weather Channel's "forecasts" and have had my yard and NEW SEEDBED FLOODED during the night of a ZERO % chance of precipitation for the next four days! I guess it was my fault - I misinterpreted "precipitation in June" as RAIN!
ReplyDeleteThey expect us to believe they can forecast 10 years from now when they are still having problems forecasting tomorrow.
ReplyDeleteWhen I first moved to Florida an Indiana transplant told me up north they say "we'll have a picnic on Saturday if it doesn't rain." In Florida they say "We'll have a picnic on Saturday." Found that to be true.
A year from now, February 2021 will be in the record books as a very, very warm one in the US. Count on it.
ReplyDeleteAlles heil Sieg heil! Comments like that greatly improve your chances of success in The Reich!!
DeletePerhaps the second or third warmest ever. They can’t go all the way and say the warmest ever, could they?
DeleteSchlongy, my wife these days is saying up is down and down is up. Hey, if Ella Guru Harris is good lookin...?
DeleteMaunder Minimum, people. Maunder Minimum. “History shows again and again, How Yahweh points out the folly of men...”
ReplyDeleteWho IS that minimal Maunderer? Inquiring minds want to KNOW!
ReplyDeleteI honestly believe the Weather Channel, along with some other weather outlets, have a narrative and agenda not unlike the news media.
ReplyDeleteThat's actually a good question. As per the long discourse below, too many of the "media outlets" just regurgitate the "model outputs" that they receive. Do they not ask questions because they are too dense? Or do they not ask questions because the model outputs agree with their biases about "climate change" (sic)?
DeleteWhy models like the CFSv2 (and others) are becoming so warm-biased is an interesting question. Are they being "modified" to reflect the ideology? Or are efforts at "improvement" just incompetent?
(Any attempts to model complex highly-non-linear systems readily lead to math that quickly becomes "spaghetti math" - note that "code" isn't necessary to make this happen (though it can make it worse than the spaghetti math).)
(While everyone concentrated on the obvious shenanigans described in the text e-mails of the 2009 (!) "Climategate" leak, one of the more interesting items in that dump is the HARRY.README text file - which was a running commentary by some poor programmer who was trying to take the spaghetti math and convert it into code... it tells you much of what you need to know about what's happened to too many "models" even when the intent isn't corrupt.)
Check your own weather ans come to your own conclusions.
DeleteNOAA had a fantastic whole country delayed Doppler Radar site with home in on regions which inexplicably went offline in a format change in NOV 2020. I've used the site for over 8 years and now it's gone with no replacement.
I've found something useful but not nearly as good @
https://www.ventusky.com/?p=48.40;-115.81;7&l=snow
Scroll to your location on the map. This one is my PNW location but you can find you own with the cursor hand scroll.
Goes right along with the Covid forcasts that showed the inability of computer models complete the sequence 1, 2, 3, ?
ReplyDeleteIf anyone in the media was paying attention they would not only questioned pandemic "science" but also laughable climate predictions.
Some years ago, I heard a comment to the effect that "You don't know what you're doing, but you have a big computer at your disposal. This is getting to be a real disease."
ReplyDeleteThat's become a disease in a number of fields. To name a few...
In too many fields of engineering, the "engineers" don't really know very much about basic engineering - but are tool jockeys who just run CAD tools over and over again hoping to find the "right" answer... which of course assumes that the CAD tools are absolutely correct (which they rarely are, particularly at the granularity at which the tool jockeys are using them).
In aviation, in many parts of the world, the "flight crew" contains no one who actually knows how to fly an aircraft by hand (don't put any of them at the controls of a Cessna 172, thye'd be lost and the results would be disastrous). Aircrew is taught to fly the automation in large aircraft - not how to actually FLY an aircraft.
In meteorology, it's become all "models-models-models" rather than looking at real details and understanding basic seat-of-the-pants meteorology. Models are a great way (in many fields) to get an incorrect answer... to seven significant digits.
As far as I can tell, that ludicrous "February forecast" was emitted (in late January) by the model system known as the CFSv2 (I think that's "Climate Forecast System", version 2). The CFSv2 (and some other "models") have problems seeing any cold air. They keep pumping out "forecasts" like that - while actual observations of what's going on in the atmosphere by smart people tend to lead to better and more-accurate results.
FWIW, the models (including the closer-timeline ones) basically missed how bad it was going to get in Texas - while anyone with real skill and experience who looked at the state of play in the atmosphere had a pretty good idea of what was coming.
Around here, we took up a collection and had a window installed in the weatherman's office.
ReplyDelete“Well, in the Houses of Parliament
DeleteEverybody’s talkin bout the President
We all chipped in a bag of cement...”
Modern weather forecast centers have a dizzying array of sensors, gauges, ocean buoys, weather balloons, computer forecasts and satellite images. But a really good forecast center will always have one guy in charge of looking out the window.
ReplyDeleteFWIW TWC went all "climate change" a couple of years ago and they pay more attention to that than anything else.
ReplyDelete12 days later, Punxsutawney Phil predicted 6 more weeks of winter.
As a former co-worker of mine used to say this time of year, "Thar's a varmint needs killin'".
I've gone to AccuWeather and they called the cold snap, which didn't snap too hard where I am, and they've called the warm-up.
Before that, the weather was relatively mild (Christmas included) until a week or so before February.
So get woke, go broke is about to hit again
Some cities from Seattle to Caribou, Maine, have had a record-warm start to winter.
Northern tier of states. Any thing below that has had it rough the last 2 weeks. Just because you have a model doesn't mean it belongs to God.
In defense of meteorology I have to say that the weather guys (and gals) at the Austin TV stations nailed this thing; even the East German judge gave them a 9.5. As early as a week out every TV station in town was saying just how bad this was going to be and why, and the numbers and timing were perfect. Their forecasting was perhaps the only bright spot in an otherwise miserable week where almost every private or government institution in Texas failed. Jim Spencer at KXAN was superlative. He was ignored, and Texans will be paying for that for a long time to come.
ReplyDeleteIn "weather" as in "news", ideology trumps reality in America.
ReplyDeleteLike the Russkies liked to say about their MSM before the Soviet Union fell:
"There is no Pravda (truth) in Isvestia (the news) and there is no Isvestia in Pravda."
One of my Estonian friends (who grew up there in Soviet times) has a larger version of that that went around back in the day.
DeleteGuy goes to the newsstand to get a paper and has a conversation with the newsstand clerk that goes something like this.
"Do you have Pravda (Truth)?"
"No, no pravda."
"What about Motherland."
"No. Sold out."
"What about Work?"
"Yes - Work for two kopecs."
"Okay, so... no truth, motherland sold out, work for two kopecs."
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ReplyDelete