whoze bin messin' wif da weather ?

[stetto]

Nasty wet snow yesterday and today, not even going to bother with a shovel. It'll melt or it won't.

Eric, your storm will be our storm on Wednesday...But the temps will hover around 32.

They keep posting temps in the high 40s "ten days down the road", but that ten days is still ten days every day...These idiots are going to need armed protection if they keep parroting computer models instead of doing their jobs like they used to.

[Onepoint]

Chicken bones and tea leaves? 

[balsum fractus]

I dunno, our forecasters seem to be pretty bang on.... they can see the moisture in the air from satelite and doppler maps...they know which way it is going, and the temperature when it gets there, so predicting what will happen is not that difficult. Timing is sometimes off (the snow started at 11:30 Friday night instead of midnight as predicted) And too, sometimes systems evolve differently than predicted, but usually milder that expected.

We had a killer tornado up this way 26 years ago, and a couple of dozen people perished....they have really been on the ball with the forecasts and weather warnings. ( especially if funnel clouds are possible..)

That is the gubmint forecasters....all in all, they do a pretty good job.

Now, if you are listening to commercial forecasters...up here called the Weather Network - they are awful. Their forte is predicting the past, and they are pretty good at it.......forecasting the weather ten minutes from now is a bit of a problem......and it is even worse as  they go further into the future.

[Onepoint]

This is nuts, we really are getting our February in April, missed much of the snow yesterday that stopped just south of us, I mean literally you could see the bluffs get whiter and whiter through the day, but we got nothing, until after dark it started to snow here, they are calling for snow until Thursday now, with up to 10" and temps in hovering in the high 20s. Just 10 days ago we had some major dust storms and 70 degrees, go figure.

[stetto]

Nony, what our "forecasters" do nowadays is depend on "computer models", and it can be jaw dropping when they explain it. They take a Nat'l Weather Service forecast, dump a bunch of their own "variables" into their computer, get ten or more different "models" out of it and just PICK ONE, often randomly. The geeks here have been right about two storm tracks this winter.

There used to be a guy here years ago, Dewey Bergquist, who would sweat over weather maps with pressure gradients and moisture contents and the like for most of each day, then using his brain instead of "picking" a computer model, he would quite accurately forecast the next 24 hours, usually saying "...Though no one will EVER be able to accurately forecast beyond 12 hours". That was a famous quote of his in the early 70s...It's still true. Hurricane Katrina is a perfect example.

These guys doing it now are wrong in that 12 hour forecast on a regular basis. Being a paint contractor, this infuriates me...

Oh, and Honcho, nuts is exactly what this is...Contrails, man, contrails...

[Onepoint]

I knew it!

We have not a heck of a lot of snow like last week, but its been steady since Monday night, quite a bit of wind moving it around, and as an added joy we had some freezing rain yesterday afternoon so we have a layer of ice on everything.  And its not supposed to quit until tomorrow sometime.

[balsum fractus]

well, you wanted moisture..... Hopefully the animals have learned to feed themselves so you can stay inside where it is nice and warm.....

[Onepoint]

Yeah, needed it bad,  but would have been nice to have winter in say,  I don't know, winter time?

[stetto]

They've "predicted" 40 degree weather in the extended forecast for about a month and a half...Magically always staying just 10-12 days in the future. Now they're calling for 60s THIS weekend and 70s sometime next week.

I'll believe it when I see it.

[balsum fractus]

you can take some solace in the fact that if they were not "forecasting weather", they would be out selling used cars to the unsuspecting public....

[stetto]

Good thinkin', Nony! Leave 'em right where we can keep an eye on 'em, eh?

[Frazz]

Calendar year for 2012 from our local state experiment station (7 miles from our house) is 7.49 inches of moisture.  This has set a 100 year record for low moisture in a year.  In the last 365 days so far, we have received 5.5 inches of moisture.

[Onepoint]

I feel for ya Frazz, we have had a wet April so far, they say its still below average, but I think they are guessing low for me specifically because they said we only had .83" of moisture this month and I think its been well over an inch or so.  But even at that this is the 1st month in 18 or more that we have even come close to normal average, and it looks it.

[stetto]

We just slept through the first night this year that didn't dip below freezing.

My garden starts are usually a couple inches tall by now, I haven't even set up the shelves for them yet. Hoping for a very late fall, our growing season is short in a good year, and we desperately need the vegables...

[balsum fractus]

...just had a preview of summer!!
Last Saturday we had a mini blizzard. today it is a very, very balmy 68 degress; blue sky and sunshine with a bit of wind...99% of the snow is gone

Yay!!  It has been a very long winter (7 months so far) so we are enjoying the turnaround......tempered by the fact that we could see snow any  time in the coming month or so.....but summer is coming......