Meteorologists deliberately withheld Nor'easter information

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The National Weather Service made a bad decision when they purposely downplayed the increasing chances that the snow would be a lot less than forecast in the major east coast cities prior to the recent storm. They did it because they did want to confuse the public they said.

The storm hit on Tuesday. On Sunday the computer modeling indicated a strong storm causing a blizzard in the major east coast cities. I am going to discuss the situation in the greater NYC area but the situation was similar for Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington D.C. The weather service put out projections of 12-18 inches for NYC and most of Long Island as well as north and west of New York City. Starting late Sunday and through Monday a lot of but not all of the computer models kept on moving the projected path of the storm west. A storm that goes west closer to the coast brings milder air that mixes or changes the snow to sleet or rain in locations near the coast.

The storm did take a path near the coast and was as strong as predicted with wind gusts on or near the beaches of 50 to 78 MPH. The snow did mix or change to rain limiting accumulations to 6 to 10 inches in New York City and 3 to 5 inches on Long Island. For large areas of Pennsylvania and Upstate New York, the blizzard forecasts verified with 20 to 42 inches falling.

Based on the forecasts the greater New York area basically shut down unnecessarily. I understand that you have to be better safe than sorry. If the weathermen downplayed the event and the storm tracked 50 miles east and then 20 inches of snow fell quickly you would have had thousands of cars, school buses etc stuck on the road. But screaming disaster when it does not occur has the negative consequences of lost credibility. Half the comments in the Long island paper referenced FAKE NEWS, a conspiracy between the media and the weatherman to increase ratings. So the next time a bad storm does come a lot of people will ignore the warnings. We saw the this happen here earlier in the decade. In 2011 Hurricane Irene targeted New York, apocalyptic predictions were made, the region shut down. Just like with the recent storm there were strong indications that the storm would not be as bad as first thought. It hit us not as a hurricane but as a tropical storm, nasty but not a disaster (it was a disaster with historic floods in upstate New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont). Low and behold Sandy targeted us the following year. This time prior to the storm the weathermen were sure Sandy would be historically bad and it sure was, killing over 200, the ocean came in a mile or two destroying hundreds of thousands of homes in New York and New Jersey alone, damaging large parts of the New York City subway, knocking out power to 90+ percent of customers some areas for upwards of two weeks in the cold. First responders risked their lives rescuing many people because many did not heed evacuation orders in part because they believed the predictions were hype.

Meteorologists need to give out the most accurate information as possible. What elected officials and the public do with the information is not their job. They are meteorologists, not sociologists and psychiatrists. The truth is that while forecasting has evolved to the point where they know a big storm is coming and generally where it will go. The ability to forecast especially near the coast where exactly where it will rain, snow and mix is not there yet. Saying we do not know is embarrassing and hurts credibility, having your lie backfire is worse.

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Weather Service made poor decision in overplaying nor’easter snow predictions

> Meteorologists Deliberately Withheld Nor'easter Information

But everything they tell us about global warming, er, I mean climate change, that's information we can trust.

One of the local stations around here has a reputation for exaggerating weather forecasts for the past few decades.