altivo

For three days they've been warning us of the terrible snowstorm that was going to hit Wednesday night, increasing the accumulation of snow, issuing dire warnings about travel difficulties.

Yesterday morning they upped the ante again, to as much as seven inches of accumulation. I went and looked at the radar screens: nothing. As far as the thing could reach and two zones west, nothing. When I went to bed last night, the warnings were still flashing, as they are even now. You could see something on the radar, but it is the type of "storm" where often nothing reaches the ground. It all evaporates in the upper atmosphere.

As of dawn, to read the actual stuff coming out of NWS, we are in the midst of a blizzard. But if you look out the window, there is not a single flake. In fact, it has been so clear all night that the full moon was distracting, shining through the bedroom curtains. The temperature is above freezing, the wind is calm, there is simply nothing of note going on. When are they going to learn to look out the window instead of relying on defective computer modeling?

[Edit 9:30 am: It is now flurrying. From the radar and what I see outside, I still simply cannot believe the forecast. They have upped the expected accumulation to 8 inches, with an accumulation rate of as much as 2 inches per hour. Areas under the most intense part of the storm on radar are reporting snow flurries or light rain. At the moment the temperature is still above freezing and snow is melting when it hits the ground.]

[Edit 8:15 pm: As I suspected, this "terrible" storm was another dud. Instead of 8 inches of snow we got well under 2 inches, most of which melted as it fell. Ground cover ranges from none to about an inch of wet snow. The temperature never really dropped much below freezing all day. There was a lot of wind, but the precipitation was minimal. NWS clung to its prediction of 5 to 8 inches until it was perfectly obvious that nothing of the sort was going to happen. About the time that the snow stopped completely at sunset, they revised the evening forecast upwards from a possible additional half inch to 1 to 3 inches accumulation, but the storm was gone by. Whoever the idiots are who write those forecasts, it's time to get rid of them. My dog could do better.]