The Scientist's View

2.14.2007

Intentional weather botch???


On occasion, even the most informed of meterologists will fudge the facts in order to avoid "getting it wrong".

The NWS did a pretty good job with this storm in actuality - except they botched one small detail - and I think it was intentional. In Takoma, I noticed only a small amount of freezing rain which occurred last night between 6pm and midnight. The bulk of the precipitation that fell after midnight was "frozen rain" but it was not "freezing rain" as was predicted.

The "frozen rain" is, in fact, sleet and 1-2 inches of that is sitting outside your door in the DC metro area ths morning. When walking in it, you will notice it has the consistency of sand. And when shoveling it, you will notice how heavy it is. And if you look at the trees and powerlines outside, you will not see much ice which is where "freezing rain" would have accumulated, but did not.

I bring this up only as a clarification to the NWS: All day yesterday the temperature was dropping, the wind was stiff from the NE and cold air was clearly filtering down from the Northeast (temps also declined all day across PA, DE and NJ). The high pressure was much stronger than the modeling programs indicated (the barometric pressure was 30.3 at noon yesterday and it was snowing heavily). An over-running event was going to happen, however all chances of accumulating sleet were discounted and the forecast doggedly stuck solely with "freezing rain". Even last night when it was sleeting very heavily (looking like a Florida thunderstorm), the forecast remained "freezing rain". In the future, one might want to stop looking at the models for a minute and do some simple investigations of regional temperatures and past storm behavior to create a more rational forecase. I would have written the following:

Temps tonight will hold steady in the mid-20s. Signifiant accumulations of sleet or freezing rain will occur. Sleet will be favored north and west and freezing rain will be favored south and east. 1-2 inches of ice are expected. Stiff 10-20mph winds will shift from NE to NW towards dawn. Chance of precipitation is 100%.

The point is that for the past several days, the freezing line was dancing right over the District and prior storm behavior (with a strong dam of cold air in place) would suggest that a range of precipitation would be observed along a 100 mile axis from Rockville (favored for sleet) to Upper Marlboro (favored for freezing rain/rain).

Sleet is not freezing rain and these guys know the difference. The botch was so obvious that I think it was intentional. Just don't know why.

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

<< Home