heh

for the last few weeks, i've been rather critical of the forecasters on tv. it's seemed as tho for all their efforts, they haven't been able to forecast the weather with much accuracy, particularly with the timing of the various storms that have tried to come thru. they seem to keep missing the mark, timing would be off, how much snow we'd get, whether we'd get snow, temperatures, etc.

for example - the saturday after turkey day, we had snow. NONE of the forecasters in albany (or boston) seemed to mention any possibility of snow, so the headlines that evening were splattered by the volume of accidents as cars crashed due to slick conditions. no one had been prepared for this, so by the time any kind of response could be mounted, it was too little too late.

today, for the first time in a little while, i'm not going to curse the forecasters (even tho they have no control over the weather) and their blunder actually worked in my (and others) favor. we were supposed to get a rare early nor'easter (they seemed to hesitate to use that name, but it really was supposed to be a nor'easter) and what do i see when i get out of work last night at midnight? nothing. (it was supposed to have started snowing yesterday evening)

now, after very groggily waking up this morning, what to my delight do i see?

the first nor'easter of the 2005-2006 winter season.

heh.

there is snow down on the cape (to receive the lion's share of 2-4"), so we are getting snow. fortunately, that's it.

my only suggestion to the forecasters is this: please look at the computer models, and then look at the maps yourself and see if what you are looking at seems to match up with the computer models. then modify your forecast accordingly, as some of it really is a gut feeling. instinct. had you used that, someone might have realized that the front from canada wasn't going to dip as far south as it did and told us that there was a pretty good chance that we may get next to nothing. i realize that you need to cry wolf a bit, but given the accuracy of recent forecasts, maybe crying wolf isn't such a good idea.

but again, thank you for screwing up the forecast. if you are going to screw it up, this is certainly how i would prefer it to happen. here's hoping that the potential snow on friday will be like this one. cry wolf and then nothing but a hiccup.