The snowstorm that wasn’t
Oklahoma City weather forecasters are generally quite accurate when tracking the paths of tornadoes, or predicting the likelihood that developing storms will produce twisters. But their success rate seems to take a hit when winter arrives.
At midday Monday, we were warned (and warned and warned) that Oklahoma City would get 6-8 inches of snow, and perhaps more in pockets, by the end of Christmas Day. Instead we wound up with a dusting as the heaviest snowfall fell farther to the south.
How refreshing it would be to every once in a while hear a forecaster put it this way when dealing with the likelihood and location of winter precip: “The truth is, we’re really not sure what’s going to happen, because we’re dealing with Mother Nature.”
If only.
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Comments
Yeah, how true. my wife and I joke all the time that if you want to know what the weather is going to do, don’t watch the news, just go outside and wait. A chimp could guess and be more accurate than our weather local news.
Watching the news in Oklahoma is such a disappointment. It’s always someone shooting their girlfriend, drug problem somewhere in the city or the occasional house fire. If they say 100% chance for rain or snow forget it. When they say no rain, IT POURS!!!
The thing is you can watch all 3 major network affiliates and they’ll all have a different forecast; it’s as if they are using different computer systems that produce different results. I would, though, a lot rather them forecasting 6″ of snow and only get an inch or so than have them forecasting just an inch and we get 8″ or a foot of snow.
Ray Nye, simply put you’re wrong. Plot the weather forecasts for a whole year and you’ll see how accurate they are. Maybe you’re disappointed we didn’t get snow this time. That doesn’t mean you should bad mouth all of their work.
But they DO. They say that ALL the time. All you have to do is LISTEN to them, and pay attention.