Local TV stations blow the Christmas Eve & Christmas Day weather forecast

[thatonedude]

I'm currently with the folks...and the forecast (at least for their neck of the woods -- Lenawee co.) verified. Snow accums were around an inch, if not less. So they -- for the most part -- got it right here. However, there is no doubt that the TV mets fucked up on forecast accums closer to the metro; probably a case of relying on the models a bit *too* much.

innate-in-you: Forecast skill has improved markedly since then; a seven day forecast now is just as accurate as a three day forecast was back in the '50s, if not more so. As any self-respecting met will tell you, beyond seven days, it's really a crapshoot. Long-range models still have a tough time forecasting beyond seven days; the GFS especially. The Euro has similar problems as well, but I believe it still outperforms the GFS as far as accuracy and consistency goes; someone can correct me there, because I might be way off.

[jimh]

In support of Paul Gross, I would like to say:

--he was actually trained academically at a rather good University (Michigan) and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Science in Meteorology;
--he has been, for more than 25 years, the behind-the-scenes guy at the WDIV weather center doing the actual forecasting for other presenters;
--his on-camera work is generally limited because Paul is not the model of what a television presenter's appearance ought to be;
--that he was working on Christmas Eve was probably because the "main weather guy" got the night off;
--in any body of work by any person it is possible to find some error; and,
--there probably is a dicta from the news department management to generate more "hype" about weather events.

In regard to presentation of weather information on television, I consider most of the presenters to be weather historians, that is, they give you data about weather than has already occurred.

Television weather presenters often have a rather unusual academic credential; many come from correspondence classes at a small "university" down south that specializes in this field--I don't recall the name, and apologize for the vague mention.

There is a more recent trend in television weather reporting: Weather Terrorism. What was once an entirely normal and expected condition for the Winter in Michigan, has become something so awful that the entire population must be warned about it over and over.

In the 1950's when I was a kid to wake up on Christmas Day and find that three-inches of new snow had fallen did not induce any terror in me. Today it seems that the mere possibility of any sort of snowfall in December is a danger and risk to the population that we must be notified about it--and notified about it in a fright-inducing manner. The creation of fear is the general goal of terrorism, and for that reason, I find a lot of TV weather to be presented by weather-terrorists.

ASIDE: definition of hype at Merriman-Webster as a noun: deception, put-on; publicity

[MasterB]

I was glad that the forecast in West Michigan was wrong and way off as they said a quarter of an inch or more of ice which is hard to forecast as it is all about the surface on the ground and if it is at the freezing point as well. Since I lost power on Wed which they didn't make a big deal about the ice on Tue like they did yesterday which was a dud which I was happy about.

[innate-in-you]

Weather Channel said flurries, so it seems like everyone messed this forecast up.

{personal edit} In late November, 1974, Meteorologists had been forecasting a snowstorm that had the potential to bring 6" of snow to Detroit in a few days.

The following day, all the prognosticators had changed the snowfall to 4", then 3".
The next day, some stations were saying 2", while others were forecasting "some snow flurries".

Being kids, we were getting bummed out.

The next night, on WJBK's weather forecast:
(Anchor): I thought you said we were getting snow flurries!

(Meteorologist): Yeah, we got snow flurries.
17 inches of flurries!

I suspect that the storm, passing just Southeast of the Detroit area, captured a lot of moisture off of Lake Huron, which was well above freezing temperature, and the CCW airflow from off Lake Huron generated the very heavy snowfall.

[paul8539]

We did not get 2 inches of 'snow'. We got 2 inches of 'partly cloudy'.