But what if the name of the winter storm was Winter Storm Ditka?
12/16 - 12/17 Snowstorm?
- Thread starter Gorm
- Start date
How can any common person even know what to expect at this point. If you pay attention to one forecasting channel or site, it changes by the hour. If you look at a bunch of different forecasts at one time those forecasts are all over the place.
Here is how it works:
1. Despite only having a civilization crippling snowfall once a decade in Iowa it will be predicted that there will be a civilization crippling snowfall.
2. Everyone will rush to the store and buy 1 month a food despite already having 3 weeks of food in their pantry and despite that if there was a civilization crippling snowfall it would only cripple civilization for 48 hours at most.
3. All my neighbors will be up at the butt crack of dawn frantically shoveling and blowing their driveway despite having absolutely nothing to do all day.
4. After clearing their driveway they will immediately drive to the grocery store and buy some things despite having just bought 1 months of food 36 hours prior.
1. Despite only having a civilization crippling snowfall once a decade in Iowa it will be predicted that there will be a civilization crippling snowfall.
2. Everyone will rush to the store and buy 1 month a food despite already having 3 weeks of food in their pantry and despite that if there was a civilization crippling snowfall it would only cripple civilization for 48 hours at most.
3. All my neighbors will be up at the butt crack of dawn frantically shoveling and blowing their driveway despite having absolutely nothing to do all day.
4. After clearing their driveway they will immediately drive to the grocery store and buy some things despite having just bought 1 months of food 36 hours prior.
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Civilization and Crippling are the only words I saw the whole time reading this post.
I took a meteorology course at ISU, so, naturally, I'm an expert...
I know that meteorologists are working with empirical models that are imperfect. These models are based on parameters that are changing by the minute. So, I don't fault meteorologists for being "wrong" persay. Really, they are communicating what is most likely to occur, but often they communicate in terms of "this will happen." So, people get upset because the meteorologist told them it would be sunny, but their BBQ got rained out.
My question to those in the field or more knowledgeable than I: is there a site or tool that shows the confidence level of the various paths that the layman can have access to? I've seen something similar for hurricanes, but I haven't seen anything for snow storms.
I know that meteorologists are working with empirical models that are imperfect. These models are based on parameters that are changing by the minute. So, I don't fault meteorologists for being "wrong" persay. Really, they are communicating what is most likely to occur, but often they communicate in terms of "this will happen." So, people get upset because the meteorologist told them it would be sunny, but their BBQ got rained out.
My question to those in the field or more knowledgeable than I: is there a site or tool that shows the confidence level of the various paths that the layman can have access to? I've seen something similar for hurricanes, but I haven't seen anything for snow storms.
Ed Wilson tweeted this out 10 days ago. As he said, it is a good analogy.
A/o 12/13/2016 at 12:30 p.m.
Link: http://www.meteor.iastate.edu/~ckarsten/bufkit/image_loader.phtml
Winter Storm Ditka, 32. Da Bears, 176.
What would the score be between Winter Storm Ditka and Winter Storm Jordan?
have a party Sat night across town I want to go to so it'd be great if it's done by midday Sat. Wondering when it's supposed to start. I'd be ok with having to go home early on Friday.
Actually I think that you can tell that computer modeling is getting a lot better with more powerful computers and some improved understanding. They have nailed the timing of this storm 16-17th from at least 7-10 days out. That is impressive. The exact tract and temperature obviously proves to be harder and what matters to more people because they only see what happens in their area.
As I recall, you got extra credit points for doing forecasts yourself. Naturally, I would go to the NWS website and put in their data for my forecast. You could do one forecast a day for the entire semester and it got you at least 1 extra credit point just for submitting and even more if you were actually right. When we got to the final, I needed a 7 out of 180 points to keep the A I already had. The class was fairly educational and the severe storm stuff was cool. My TA was Kai Johnson-Omara who is now the weather guy for KCRG, in Cedar Rapids.
Idk about dat one Todd. I'd say Winter Storm Jordan drops a cool 210, breaking the previous scoring record. Hurricane Ditka vs Winter Storm Ditka is a matchup for the ages.
