Last Tuesday, the weather forecast for Silver Spring on Wednesday was for up to 10 inches of snow. Yet I looked on Weather.com and while they were confidently predicting this childishly-named 'snowquester' or the more serious-sounding (though still somewhat inane) 'Winter Storm Saturn', I looked at the forecast temperatures, all of which were well above freezing, and concluded that it would never get cold enough for the snow to settle. So, at least in my brain, something didn't add up.
But Wednesday morning rolls around and my daughter's school is closed and NPR (where my wife works) told non-essential personnel to stay home. The weather services were still telling us to prepare for a 'snowmageddon'.
In the end, it snowed like crazy, but only enough to deposit about a half inch of very wet snow that melted almost immediately. The roads remained snow-free throughout with no need for salt or sand. It was a non-event. I guess I can't really complain, because although I missed my daily 7 mile cycle commute, the family got a day off. I just wish the weather services would use a bit of common sense. If it's not cold enough for snow to settle, it's probably not going to dump 10 inches of snow. One would think the weather services' computers would have been programmed to figure this out. It's not rocket science.
Sometimes things turn out better than the forecast, but sometimes they turn out like http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_q6ikqYdf96s/S3YP3GFzlQI/AAAAAAAABGY/CocohhYtZxQ/s1600-h/snow6.jpg in 2010 North Texas on my commute route. As one that worked at a rocket engine company, I can testify that error exists even IN "rocket science."
ReplyDeleteI'm fine with the standard run-of-the-mill errors. What kinda pisses me off is when any fool can see that it's too warm for snow to accumulate, yet the weather services say we're going to get ten inches.
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