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Have your weather forecasters been getting it wrong a lot more than normal?

Feb 27, 2013 2:03 PM

On Sunday my local news stations & the NWS forecast a winter mix headed our way with 1-3" of snow. On Monday, they changed the outlook to all snow with 2-4". Yesterday morning it changed to 4-6" of snow, & then yesterday evening, after being put under a winter storm warning, we were in the 6-10" range. I woke up this morning with over a foot of snow on my driveway with the snow still coming down and every school closed because even though this wasn't a bad storm; they cities were preparing for 4 inches of snow, not over a foot.

I'm aware that predicting the weather is a huge mixture of guesswork and science, but this year seems their guesswork has been dead-wrong with every storm we've had so far. So for those of you living in the snowy areas, are you having the same experience with bad forecasts?

eraten eraten

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For us the weather mostly seems to be happening faster than they expect. If the prediction is for a sandstorm on Thursday, it will get here on Wednesday, if it's supposed to rain on Saturday, pack your raincoat on Friday. Also the lows have been lower than predicted, which led to the death of some of my plants, as I'd put them outdoors during the day to enjoy the sun and left them out overnight because the low was supposed to be in the mid-40's, then it dropped below freezing. The highs have also been lower than predicted, which leads people to leave home with lighter jackets than they ought to have. What we are mildly worried about is that we are getting March sandstorms in February, which suggests that either March is going to be one hella windy month, or it is going to be a very long and very hot summer this year. A city that has summers with 100 consecutive days over 100 degrees doesn't need any extra long and hot summers, thanks.

moondrake moondrake
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We have had much less snow that normal in Western Virginia. Every couple of days they will predict some, but it fizzles out before it gets here. Skunked again!

hot72chev hot72chev
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Yes. They have no idea what is going to happen and they seem to scramble much more than usual and change it back and forth all the time. Sometimes I wish they'd just tell me what to wear or carry instead of giving me an exact temperature, surely the wouldn't tell me to wear a coat and it be 80*....would they?

nmchapma nmchapma
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I've said it before and I'll say it again. I put meteorology on the same level as astrology in terms of being a legitimate science. Miss Cleo could predict the weather about as well as most of those clowns.

To answer your question, I don't think they've been wrong more lately, since I find that they've never been all that accurate.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWyHiV3l3MA

jazzsinger jazzsinger
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We call them Weather Guessers or Weather Estimators.

lavikinga lavikinga
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They get you all worried about big storm~then fizzle.

gigi889 gigi889

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