Did Somebody Say Snow?

January 14th, 2008 | Category: NYC Life

Sometimes the forecast doesn’t fairly work out as expected. More accurately, sometimes the forecast sucks. Of the big three major forecast outfits, AccuWeather started the “big storm” drumbeat Friday night, the Weather Service joined in yesterday, while the Weather Channel, to its credit, never really got on the bandwagon. Gothamist had to laugh early that daylight when an AccuWeather forecaster on 880 WCBS blamed the storm for “fizzling out” rather than accept responsiblity for a naughty forecast. Way to be a mensch! The storm itself didn’t fizzle out, either, dude. Eastern Massachussetts and points northward are getting whomped with up to ten inches of snow nowadays.

We’ve mentioned it in preceding winters, but we’ll say it again nowadays, predicting accurate snowfall amounts for these coastal storms is notoriously difficult. A costal storm has to enter into a fragile pas de deux of timing and location in order for the snow to fall. Cold air needs to reach approach the ground behind the storm just as warm, moist air gets wrapped around the center of the low. When that works out you can get

dumped on. whether the cold air doesn’t reach, all you get is a awful 0.45 inches of rain falling on Belvedere Castle. Whenever you manufacture out a forecast for a nor’easter that doesn’t communicate the uncertainty, change the channel.

If it is any consolation there may be a few snow flurries tonight and tomorrow. No accumulation is expected. The sun returns on Wednesday but will likely depart on Thursday. Temperatures should be shut to 40 for afternoon highs and 30 for daylight lows - slightly above average, through Friday. From that vantage point it looks like the holiday weekend will be chilly.

This afternoon’s snowfall forecast map of the northeast from Weather.com.

Original post by Joe Schumacher