It’s that time again!
Confidence is growing that Friday through Saturday, a significant winter storm will effect the eastern United States, including all the big cities from Richmond to Boston. Right now, as I write this, it doesn’t look like it’s going to miss. If you like snow—and I mean if you really like big snow, feel free to get excited, although don’t ask me how much you're going to get until tomorrow night--I'm one to wait until 48 hours prior to the storm before I prognosticate on exact amounts. If you’re like me, better fire up your SAD lamps, pop your happy pills, and prepare to grumble a lot (all things I am doing!) If you really hate snow, you probably won’t like hearing we’ll probably be doing this again in the middle of next week. After that, it looks somewhat likely there will be a thaw in the East. This isn’t like the last two winters—the cold spells will be transitory, like a yo-yo. Warm, then cold, then warm, then cold, all the way to spring.
You can read a great forecast here and FishOutOfWater has a great diary too. I don’t have much to add to that at the moment other than I think the rain/snow line will be farther inland than models are currently showing and I expect them to start showing this in the next day or so. This would mean much more slop in the big cities than snow, and it’d also mean the I-81 corridor gets slammed. How much? Let’s go with “a lot.”
But I want to talk about something else: The Socialmediarologist.
This creature did not exist ten years ago. But with widespread data availability and social media, they’re everywhere. I’d even classify us as this particular creature, although, we’ll be way more responsible because we're all very level-headed reality-oriented folks. But basically, the socialmediarologist is a hobbyist (although there are some professional meteorologists in the ranks and they are highly annoying). They live for the model run, and if a model run shows something significant, they hype it up. If the event doesn’t happen, they say the model was wrong (or, more often, they never mention it again). They’ll throw out snowfall maps as if they’re fact---7 days before an event. They post proprietary model data (and at some point, the Europeans will crack down and enforce their copyright. That’s why I say, for us, if one must share the Euro’s outputs, make sure it came from the part that is in the public domain, or make sure you’ve got permission to do so.) Some even have posted death threats to professional meteorologists and other hobbyists who ask that people act with some decorum and responsibility (ask Dennis Mersereau or the staff at NWS Los Angeles about that sometime.)
Meteorologists are really not comfortable with this crowd. Dan Satterfield writes:
There is a real possibility of a major winter storm this weekend in the I-95 corridor from DC to Boston, and it may impact New Jersey and the Delmarva area as well, with high winds and perhaps some heavy snow. That said, it’s just too far out right now to pin down accumulation amounts. The rain snow line will be right across the area, and experience shows that 5 days away from an event, the models usually do a rather poor job of predicting where that line will set up. In snow forecasting just a degree or two difference can mean the difference between a foot of snow and a lot of rain! This is why responsible meteorologists do not post raw model data more than 3 days away from an event. It’s just not likely to be correct, and could actually give someone a false sense that the storm will not impact them.
Meteorology is not the only science where this happens—it’s common in all the hard sciences now. Late last week, when a sensor in the DART network off of the Pacific Northwest malfunctioned, someone saw this and posted that a tsunami was due to strike the Pacific Northwest. This went a bit viral, buoyed on by a crank and sometimes psychotic pseudoscientist who goes by the name Dutchsinse. He thinks he can predict earthquakes (he can’t, because no one can—it’s not possible) and alleges among other things that scientists are covering lots of things up (oh, and NEXRAD radar drives tornadoes into cities, chemtrails are real and spreading disease and HAARP controls the weather—neither do that and chemtrails aren’t real! ). Every anomalous dust cloud is a volcanic eruption being covered up. He has a loud and proud social media fan club numbering in the many tens of thousands. Geology departments at universities around the country have dealt with them, and they don’t like it one bit.
The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network received a good number of panicked inquiries, and apparently so did the weather service office in Portland, Oregon, because yesterday, after video of a tidal bore in Grays Harbor, WA surfaced, they threw some shade at that crowd by posting an article titled “Do you know how tides work?” And the most remarkable thing of all is a thread on the PNSN’s Facebook page. The geophysicist who was on duty when the DART sensor glitched posted exactly what happened and people still are arguing it was something else. Is it any wonder some scientists choose not to communicate with the public with jerks like these?
We live in an era where far too many consider their individual opinion to be fact, even when contrary to reality and well, actual facts. We also live in an era of unprecedented data openness, so therein lies the hazard. Navigate with caution!
Also, it’s probably going to snow big on the East Coast, so stay tuned!
ADMINISTRATIVE STUFF
For publishing things directly to the weather center group, you can add a publish group. In the diary write mode, it’s on the right. This queues it to the group but it doesn’t autopublish when you hit publish. For that you have to go to the group queue and publish that way. I’m hoping this path to publishing diaries to groups is made simpler as time goes on.
Also, who wants the job of launching us on 1/30? I’m happy to do it, but I know someone out there is itching to write a forecast for the Iowa Caucuses. Send me a kosmail. I would also like to have the first week schedule settled by next Saturday. I’ll put up a diary where we can hash all that out later this week (perhaps Friday, if I get snowed in!)