Weather thread, 2/3
- Thread starter snowcraig2.0
- Start date
Weird. Accuweather was saying on their blog this morning they are dropping the amounts.
Surprised a bit by the morning snow Tuesday around Des Moines. Figured the dry air would be too much for the snow to actually make it to the ground and accumulate.
That's because "Earl" isn't a person. That link is one particular run of raw data from one particular model that has 4 runs per day. It's also the combined snow for the next 120 hours.
A pretty useless image to look at, especially by itself. And actually, anyone who throws out a 120-snow total forecast with specifics is completely BS'ing you.
For instance. The Weather Channel's 120-hour hypecast in this thread for Des Monies was 18-24".
We got 6.8"
Whoops.
So good sir, can I trouble you for a forecast for my 8 a.m. Saturday flight? I've seen anywhere from 20-40% chance of snow but nothing more concrete than that. Will I get out of here as scheduled?
How do you know Earl isn't real? He's got a website, all you have is posts on a message board. Maybe you aren't real?
1. That's last night's 0 UTC run, aka 6pm CT, so you're picking up the latter portion of this past storm in that graphic.
2. I wish that website would crash, way too many people just post stuff from there as if its an actual forecast and without any other corroborating evidence.
I don't think you have much to worry about. Keep an eye on it, but especially if you're only coming from Ankeny, I think you'll be okay.
I don't think there would be great odds on it being bad enough to knock out flights, especially that early.
Much obliged. And as always, thanks for your contributions here, even when you're the bearer of bad news, and even when you're not answering my own personal travel questions!
YOUR RIGHT! And come to think about it, I have never seen his whole body of TV. He could just be an upgraded version of Max Headroom. I should watch the newscast more closely and see if he ever has any glitches or stutters.
I get what you and FDWXguy are saying about that website, but, at least for this last storm, Earl was way closer than the local news (KCRG).
I'll call BS on that too. I don't know that KCRG forecasted, but I personally know two of them from ISU and they were both vocal on social media about this being nowhere close to 18".
Here is "Earl" (in reality the Friday 12Z GFS run) "predicting" 18" by today in this very thread.
Yeah, there was probably a run of the 16 to 20 GFS runs between now and then that happened to be right on, but there were plenty more that were wrong.
No need to get testy. I appreciate your insights here.
I was referring more towards when the storm was in the 84 hour window. At that point Earl (I know it's not really Earl) was basically saying 4-6 inches in CR, which is what I cleaned out of my driveway this morning. KCRG right up until yesterday afternoon was saying 1-3 inches.
Yep, they undershot which is surprising. They usually seem to be on the high side.
**** happens sometimes. Here in Wichita we were forecast to have 4-6. The NWS office at the main airport had 8.7, 15-20 miles nw of there had nearly a foot, 20 miles east at my house we had right about six and 10 miles east of me had 5.
