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"Mammoth Snow Storm" Underwhelms
mi (197448) writes You heard the scare-mongering, you heard the governors and mayors closing public transit and declaring driving on public roads a crime. But it turned out to have been a mistake. Boston may have been hit somewhat, but further South — NYC and Philadelphia — the snowfall was rather underwhelming. Promised "2-3 feet" of snow, NYC got only a few inches. Is this an example of "better safe than sorry," or is government's overreach justified by questionable weather models exceeding the threshold of an honest mistake?
Damn global warming!
...except there IS a mammoth snowstorm in other parts of New England.
The 21st Century: the Century of Whiners.
Little over a foot of snow has probably fallen, but 3 foot snow drifts are everywhere from what I can see! Snow plows are sporadic, and I'm not seeing many cars, or anyone for that matter, out and about. The wind and bitter cold here, is what is bad, not the snow amounts!
NYC got only a few inches
That's what she said.
"Is that it?"
"Have you started yet?"
"Boston may have been hit somewhat"
I think that's completely unrepresentative. It doesn't take much searching through instagram or any other photo sharing site to see that Boston not only has a lot of snow this morning, but that the storm is still raging and blowing pretty hard (and will throughout the day).
Just because NYC was underwhelmed does not mean that the actions for safety are unwarranted.
Nothing like having a headline for the sake of having a headline. Media can never be happy.
It just isn't possible to predict this stuff precisely. But you can't put a travel ban in place once the storm has actually started -- it would be too late. You have to do it pre-emptively for it to be effective.
we have at least a foot around here and higher in areas that are drifting. Most the stores are closed as well as schools and post office.
And a slow news day it was for all yesterday. IT just so happens the "News" hail from NYC, and apparently what's "news" for it is "news" for all.
After what happened in my home city of Atlanta last year, I think it's smart for cities to play it safe if there's any chance of bad weather.
You have to make plans and decisions ahead of time. It takes time to execute the preparations you need. You have to go with the forecast as it is at that time. Governors are not weathermen.
It doesn't matter what the mayor's office does to prepare for an emergency, there will always be someone there to say they were wrong to do it.
"Tell me doctor, with all of your defenses, are there any provisions for an attack by killer bees?"
Stuff that's barely worth caring about.
The weather agency should state it as a percent similar to rain forecasts. Example: "There is a 70% estimated probability that snow will reach more than 2 feet deep in City X" kind of thing. It's then understood there's a 30% chance the snow will be a bust.
Table-ized A.I.
This is the age of click-bait and too many 24-hour news and weather channels. The potential for disaster is just as enticing as a real disaster (sadly, my spouse enjoys watching the storm coverage on the weather channels)
It will only get worse. Someday, they will spend days of coverage on something as significant as the amount of air in a ball.....wait
This should be good for the drought in California getting snow in Mammoth. :-)
I've got 20 inches and it's still going. I might not get three feet, but the total will be in the neighborhood of the forecasts.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
That's the real victim today.
You must be new to regions that get snow, and to reality. Reality is messy, inaccurate.and imperfect, especially with things w don't fully understand like weather.
This is very common. It stems from the fact that clouds are unevenly distributed throughout the storm, and the storm moves along air currents in the upper atmosphere. You can look at history and find that this is how storms always hit: some places get hit heavier than others, storms change direction before they hit and some places don't get hit that were expected to.
When weathermen report on storms, they report on where it is likely to hit. Not where it is guaranteed to hit, but where it is likely. This means that some places that get hit weren't expected, and some places that don't get hit were expected, and some places get hit lighter or heavier than expected.
Spend a few years watching the weather and weather reports and you'll learn that this is reality.
NYC might have only received a few inches, but Nassau County got 12 - 18 inches and Suffolk County got over 20 inches (and still snowing)... And Connectiut and the rest of New England got even more. The forecast for Suffolk County was consistently in the 20 to 30 inch range, so they got that right. Having hundreds or thousands of people stuck in a blizzard on the Long Island Expressway would have been a disaster.
If your business and your work was a chaotic system involving billions of mostly random variables, I'd question your organizational skills. Unfortunately, you can't ask nature to sort her shit out.
To paraphrase, put a small-minded man in a position of power, and he will find a way to use it -- regardless of the circumstances.
> Is this an example of "better safe than sorry", or is government's overreach
It's an example of a bunch of whining losers complaining about EVERYTHING.
Warn people and they do nothing: People whine that you didn't warn loudly enough.
Warn people and the storm isn't as bad as predicted: People whine because you warned them too loudly.
GOOD GOD you are pathetic.
People have finally begun to realize this problem, and created a new American Model. The predictions of large NYC and Philly snowfalls came from the Old American Model. The new American Model, along with the European Model, both correctly predicted the snowfalls.
The New American Model requires significantly more computer power to use. It has not been thoroughly tested. But expect to see it being used more often after this success.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
Those damned Patriots under-inflated the snow machine!
Table-ized A.I.
WE ALL GONNA DIE!
Oh wait. We aren't?
Howsabout a Mayan...oh wait, we already passed the end of that calendar and are still here.
Space rocks? No. If I have to listen to Steven Tyler screeching out "I Don't Wanna Miss A Thing" one more time *I* will contract space madness and go on a killing spree.
I know! ALIEN INVASION!
Soylent green? It's...people man! PEOPLE!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
We are having record highs in the Puget Sound area. Highs in the upper 50s and even into the 60s.
"You heard the scare-mongering"
"Promised "2-3 feet" snow"
"government's overreach"
Congratulations, Timothy. Today's the day I take Slashdot up on its longstanding offer to disable advertising, and it's all because of you!
Because honestly, y'all don't deserve money for this level of pabulum.
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Unfortunately, you can't ask nature to sort her shit out.
You just need a pyramid, a fancy getup, some sharp knives and plenty of disposable humans for sacrifices.
I'm sure that internet will provide the instructables on how to remove human hearts most easily, along with some recipes.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
Not sure what you mean by "even the National Weather Service" - they were the ones who generated the original forecast. All news outlets and "meteorologists" just parrot NWS forecasts.
With regards to warning people... Damned if they do and damned if they don't.
Yeah seriously i have lots of relatives on facebook from mass to maine who are all kinds of buried in right now, the pictures are great.
However, you think just because it didnt hit right downtown new york fucking city that the snow didnt even happen. You are an idiot. You are the problem in this scenario. Remove you and your shitty opinion and the rest of this whole event works out pretty smooth.
And I bet the forecast for that day will be 128F :)
It's still in the process of "whelming" us.
CT meteorologist predicted 2 to 3 feet and winds to 45 MPH. We got 2 ft and gusts to 45 MPH.
Some stations hyped it.
The Gov. closed highways, probably a good call.
300$ fee if you drive in 3 feet of snow!!! GEEE! Hope these guys never go up north.
I remember the first time I travel in the USA with my children, they have around 8-10 years old. We were in a restaurants, I order some beer for myself. A unknow local beer, and my children want to taste it like they do here, I give them the glass... then the waiter tell us that it's completly illegal and we can be arrested for doing that. I think to myself, what a real land of the free where you government tell you how to raise your children. No wonder why alcohol crime are so high down there.
Ceci n'est pas une Signature !
They sell more high priced advertising when they get everyone in a panic about storms. I can't believe they got the governor of NY to get on TV and tell everyone that it was going to be one of the worst storms in state history...
This morning the best sensational headline they could manage was "One of the strongest storms on earth today". Seriously?
I know Boston got a bunch of snow, but this is the northeast. We're used to this stuff - it snows in the winter. No big deal.
a big newspaper here in Finland had a LIVE STREAM straight from NY in their site with a rather dramatic headline...
I checked out the stream, and to be hoenst, it looked much worse when I looked out of the window behind the screen......... Just sad.
So what? NYC only got a few inches. That's what matters.
The important question is if it was a scientific prediction about the snow and even more important, was there "consensus" about the depth of the snow? If there was consensus, then there is two feet of snow on the ground and stupid right wingers clinging to guns and religion are just denying that the snow is there....
What the hell is this crap: "scare-mongering" and "government's overreach"?
Guess what, the weather is unpredictable sometimes.
Would you rather them say a dusting of snow and then get 2 feet of snow? When that happens it takes 3 times as long to dig out, because snow removal efforts are not properly prepared. Every weather report said that it was going to hit NYC hard. And in the mean time Boston has a foot of snow overnight, and more still falling.
If you are going to post something about the weather, at least make it somewhat of a technological story, not this stupid shit.
Snow! Frozen water! Run for your lives! The world as we know it is over! Nothing will ever be the same!!
It's not like this wasn't a blizzard at all. Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts are all getting hit with a lot of snow and wind. What happened is that the model predicted more of a path over the Hudson Valley rather than interior Connecticut. It literally came down to which way the wind blew. The problem is that as hard as snowfall is to predict, predicting how a bunch of people are going to react in less than optimal weather is much harder.
Weather models are every bit as good as climate models. And, we know how well they work.
Hipsters, there is a whole world outside NYC.
If you think weather forecasting is easy, let's see some of your forecasts. A forecast which has been substantially correct for New England and merely didn't extend as far south as had been expected only underscores the difficulty of the exercise. Occam's Razor suggests that no cause beyond "honest mistake" need be posited. I know some people like to take every opportunity to prattle on about government overreach, but you're *really* stretching that fabric too thin this time. Get a grip.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
if storm prediction is incorrect X out of Y times, then the government preparation for the storm is going to be unnecessary X out of Y times.
No one likes a Monday morning quarterback.
The link titled 'questionable weather models' was to a lightweight piece of reporting, mostly covering Gary Szatkowski's mea culpa (something that public officials have to do, regardless of whether there was any negligence.) There was no informed reporting on whether the models performed worse than anyone has a right to expect.
The forecasters themselves were well aware that small deviations made a large difference to the models' predictions, but that aspect was almost entirely lost in the reporting, which was mostly about how bad it could be. If public officials don't act, on the grounds that the outcome is uncertain, the press and public will be all over them if it turns out as forecast (or worse), as happened to Bloomberg in NYC a couple of years ago.
The forecasters have more information than the public knows what to do with.
... and send them to Italy
remember them well (won't say who well known org):
-x days: it's big/bad but almost certainly going to turn north - european model says likely to make land but all others disagree
-y (>-x) days: european models say it could hit major ne city(/ies) but others say small %
-z (>-y) days: other models starting to converge w/european but still could go either way...
-2(ish) days: OH %^$&!...
jessh...except there IS a mammoth snowstorm in other parts of New England.
The 21st Century: the Century of Whiners.
You aren't whining about the whiners, are you?
>>WE ALL GONNA DIE!
Of course! Everyone does eventually!
I am quite happy with all the precautions that were taken in preperation for this storm. Better to be over cautious than not! Clearing all the roads in the Tri-State area allwed all the plows to clear the roads better than if they were dealing with a lot of cars, and accidents on the road! Same with all the rails, commuter, and Subway.
I was living in Boston during the blizzard of '78, where everyone went to work as usual, then the storms shifted and the call for evacuation was called at 2pm. TOO Late!!! The damage was done!!! The city was shut down for a full week, and Route 128, all lanes, in both directions, end to end, were a bumper to bumper parking lot for the entire week!
I congratulate the Goveners of New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut, plus the Mayor of the City of New York, for their correct decisions in preperation for this storm!
... wait... damn.
... those of us who live in areas with real snowfall are laughing our asses off.
Long Island N.Y. has over 5 million people living there, and is car-centric. The predicted warnings of heavy snow caused almost all businesses and schools to shut down today, which probably saved many lives. About ten years ago two inches of snow paralyzed N.Y.City because they weren't prepared for it (upstaters had a good laugh then).
News for nerds. Stuff that matters.
Bad example: Whining about how a snowstorm wasn't big enough.
Good example: A discussion about the mathematical modeling used to predict the snowstorms, and a historical graph comparing predictions to actuals. Oooh, how about graphing the delta between the two by color and overlay it onto a map so we can see where predictions are more or less accurate.
The following bulletin has just been received on the WKRP teletype!
Monster lizard ravages east coast! Mayors in five New England cities have issued emergency requests for federal disaster relief as a result of a giant lizard that descended on the east coast last night! Officials say that this lizard, the worst since '78, has devastated transportation, disrupted communication, and left many hundreds homeless!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Up here in Boston we have over a foot and it has not stopped or even really slowed. It may not get to the 30" that some models were predicting but this is plenty enough snow thank you very much.
You had me until you tried to graph it, then you sounded like an old manager I had that didn't believe it until he had a pivot table with a graph.
Welcome our new giant lizard overlords!
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I got snow up to the windows of my car... Probably 30" or so, about 15 miles west-northwest of Boston. It's all nice and fluffy and easy to shovel, so I don't really mind. I'll get to shoveling this afternoon when it stops falling.
One word: Ratings
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Clearly this was orchestrated by his illuminati in their interest of global domination. They'll be at your door soon for your mandatory abortion.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Enough said.
TFA: "Promised "2-3 feet" of snow, NYC got only a few inches"
The media echo chamber. They salivate over any snow storm event as a snowpocalypse.
Where I live in RI they had forecast 24 to 30 inches of the shit. We got maybe 5 or 6 inches of snow which is pretty much a non-event. But everything is shut down, the stores are closed, transit systems are shut down and the Governor appears on TV in bed hair. It's sort of amusing.
And I have the day off work. But then I couldn't get to work if I tried as they ban all car travel and public transit is all shut down and a 53 mile walk to Cambridge, MA is out of the question.
Historic Storm!
Here Ye Here Ye. Run the shops and get your Toilet Paper in Bulk. Be Prepared to live like a caveman for year!
What I would like to have seen.
Estimated snow fall ranges.
Average expected snow fall to get
Standard Deviation of your estimate.
Confidence interval.
We get a lot of this talk during the political season. So the general public does seem to have at least a rudimentary understanding of such statistics. Why can't we get this for things like weather. Other than trying to make us panic about every freaking thing.
I want News, not sensationalism .
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
As someone who is in a southeastern CT town I can very much say that this snowstorm has not been underwhelming. It has very much so delivered on its promises.
What kind of douche bag question is this? What kind of fucking moron are you to submit such a shitty question? I bet you live in Miami.
It's purely about ratings. That's it. It's not politics, climate change, incompetence. It is willful stretching of the weather models to generate more severe predictions, and hence more ratings. And, I would not be surprised to learn that makers of emergency supplies provided incentives to weather forecasters to predict more extreme weather.
The simplest explanation tends to be the correct one. The simplest explanation for everything is money.
Oh, shut up.
There is a perfectly suitable system on this site for vetting stories that are submitted. If enough involved users (i.e. nerds) decide a story is interesting enough to discuss further, the story is promoted to the top. Bitch about stories at the firehose, not in the comments of stories that were already promoted by your peers.
while [ 1 ]; do echo -n -e "\xe2\x95\xb$((($RANDOM&1)+1))"; done
East coast snow storms are notoriously difficult to predict. I'm not surprised that even with modern technology they still can't get it perfect. In addition to the dynamic nature of the low-pressure circulation interacting with the coast and the gulf stream (like a hurricane) you've got the all-important freezing temperature line. It's even worse than "a line that might shift" though, because if the cold air intrudes under the warm you get freezing rain, not snow.
I grew up in that region (DC area) and it was always like this. I have no envy for those forecasters.
One of my fondest memories is of the 1978 storm. Hit in the afternoon, 2" predicted. 6PM, forecast increased 6-8". Next morning? Most of us had 24", some hit 36". I wonder if modern tech could have done better.
More often than not though, it seemed like DC always got cheated out of snow when I was a kid. Rain, sleet, snow that got rained on and turned into a soggy mess. Beautiful snow that you could play in on your day off was just all too rare.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
If budgeting were a nonlinear process, you'd never get it right. Budgets and time-line predictions are controllable, weather is not. Weather is a non-linear process. Edward Lorenz (look him up on Google if you don't know who he was), said that weather forecasting more than a couple of days out is little more than guess work. The models are limited by the number and accuracy of the measurements.
"Gentlemen, you can't fight in here! This is the War Room!" -- Dr. Strangelove
Another pissed off righty huh mi?
300$ fee if you drive in 3 feet of snow!!! GEEE! Hope these guys never go up north.
If 3 feet of snow is normal where you live then it isn't a big deal. Where I grew up was on the shore of Lake Erie and we got lots of lake effect snow so several feet was nothing unusual for us. Other places 3 feet of snow or even 3 inches is a huge problem. Folks south of the Mason Dixon line rarely get big snowfalls and don't really have the equipment to deal with it adequately due to the cost/benefit ratio. I'm sure you're not really equipped for a month of 100+F days like they get in Texas or Arizona. I'm sure you're not equipped for earthquakes like they are in California. Chances are you don't experience Tornadoes with the frequency they do in Oklahoma. Just because you are used to a particular weather condition doesn't mean everyone else needs to prepare for the same.
A unknow local beer, and my children want to taste it like they do here, I give them the glass... then the waiter tell us that it's completly illegal and we can be arrested for doing that.
It depends on locale but most likely the waiter was misinformed. It is generally legal for a minor to drink alcohol in a private setting and/or under the supervision of a parent or guardian most places in the US. The waiter cannot sell alcohol to anyone under 21 and most likely was just being a little over cautious. If the waiter were to serve alcohol to a minor they can get in hot legal water and lose their job.
I think to myself, what a real land of the free where you government tell you how to raise your children.
Are you seriously going to tell me that there are no laws regarding parenting in Canada? Just because the rules are a bit different south of the border doesn't mean you should start getting all holier-than-thou. I'm quite certain there are Canadian laws those of us south of the 49th parallel would find equally odd.
meanwhile it was 70deg in OK yesterday, and 65 today, and the 100yr avg for this week is ~45deg.
but then the last several winters in OK have been warmer than usual, such that if you took that 100yr avg and plotted it (since its a new avg every year), it's increased by 3.6deg, which is a pretty large shift and due almost entirely to the last several years being warmer than whats gone before.
As they say: any single event is difficult to link to global warming.
But when you have a series of events the show a clear trend, the link becomes far easier to prove.
Where does Timothy live? Where does the submitter ("mi") live? Have they experienced these kinds of serious storms? Have they lived in both rural and urban areas in New England?
New Englanders may chuckle that, every year, there seems to be a Storm of the Century. But, humor aside, we're glad that we're forewarned and can take precautions. These precautions were completely justified, and considering that some areas are seeing 20+ inches of snow (and counting), this was a serious storm.
To anyone debating this who has not lived through an actual blizzard: Please read the accounts of people actually having experienced this. To anyone in NYC whining about it: Fornicate yourself with an icicle, please.
Somebody bury him in the the closest snow bank please wherever he is. TWC is no longer a source of information for me about the weather after this event. Too much sensationalism interspersed with some actual reporting. I watched this morning and they had a chalkboard up with a formula for calculating population density; all in multiple colors of chalk.
Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
Western Suffolk. Just spent over an hour shoveling over a foot of snow out of my driveway. The whiners can SHOVE IT, WE GOT OUR FREAKIN' BLIZZARD. A huge monstrous storm did exactly what they said, but it was 35 miles east of where they said. A storm that was probably over 300 miles long and 75 miles wide barely missed it's target. It was real, it happened, it's still happening in New England Tuesday afternoon. Landfall was a little off, that's it, not underwhelming, not a conspiracy, a little off the predicted model tract.
Fair enough. I never bother to go there. But I'm heading to http://slashdot.org/recent now.
Hmmm... Hovers over color icon with tooltip "Filter firehose entries rated blue or better." What colors are better than blue? *facepalm* Well, I'll try it out.
Sounds like a case of damned if you do, damned if you don't.
There is no way Bennett's ridiculous blogging is being promoted by users here. It's pretty obvious the 'editors' are doing the real selecting.
Hah! Captcha: rambles
It's certainly not underwhelming here, west of Boston, with 24+ inches on the ground (and still snowing). Definitely not underwhelming.
Also, weather forecasters can't promise anything. If I recall correctly, NYC got about 10 inches, not the predicted 2-3-feet but more than "a few inches".
When dealing with imperfect predictions (in this case snowfall, but it applies to most things), there are 4 basic possibilities:
1. Predict little snow, get little snow (OK)
2. Predict little snow, get lots of snow (people can die)
3. Predict lots of snow, get little snow (people are unnecessarily inconvenienced)
4. Predict lots of snow, get lots of snow (OK)
There's a tradeoff between the accuracy of the forecast, the harm done by error case #2, and the inconvenience caused by error case #3.
Having lived in NY state, according to NY city people, everything past Westchester is irrelevant. Even Albany (state capital for non US people) is a hick town that doesn't matter.
I've seen that too. I'm generalizing of course and have seen plenty of exceptions but NYC dwellers definitely often think their city is all-that-and-a-bag-of-chips when it's really just another city and not actually amazing to the rest of us. I went to college on the east coast and spent plenty of time in NYC and the folks from NYC were among the most parochial people I've ever met. They tended to think of themselves as worldly when they barely knew (or cared about) anything if it didn't exist in NYC. Most of them couldn't drive and those that could generally couldn't drive well. They had tons of preconceived and almost invariably wrong ideas about what life is like elsewhere.
In their mindset, water magically appears from the tap & the 200 miles a aqueduct doesn't need maintenance, nor do the roads stretching 400 miles to the other side of the state.
That's unfortunately not unique to NYC though it seems to be particularly virulent there. Lots of big city folks act like they think all the food, water, power, and stuff they buy appears by magic somehow and is undeserving of their attention. I had a friend a few years back who was living in one of the bigger midwest cities and he was complaining about how there was "nothing to do". I asked him what he wanted to do that wasn't available in some form or fashion but was in NYC? Major league sports? Good shopping? Excellent restaurants? Public transit? Museums? etc. Basically everything he was complaining about was available but just not quite in the same fashion as in NYC. Not that NYC doesn't have great stuff going for it but it's still just another big city with the same amenities available in most big cities.
nature laughs.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
That's all it was off. The storm forms 50 miles to the west, and the predictions are spot on. Let's see you do better from your mom's basement.
Yeah, this was absolutely the right call. There were four possible scenarios here:
The best course of action by far is to shut the city down. The downside of doing so when there is no snowstorm is far lesser than the opposite. Those who complain have no idea what the fuck they're talking about (and who really expects a cabaret singer to have any knowledge of risk assessment and weather prediction?).
So following this logic:
-There is no Pink Unicorn invasion and the officials shut the city down. At worst, people lose a day's worth of work, some businesses are affected. Whiners abound.
-There is no Pink Unicorn invasion and the officials leave the city running. Nothing happens, nobody notices.
-There is a Pink Unicorn invasion and the officials shut the city down. Everyone congratulates them for their foresight.
-There is a Pink Unicorn invasion and the officials leave the city running. Possible severe damage to infrastructure, possible death toll, cleanup is significantly more complicated and takes far longer. Officials are berated for their carelessness.
There could be a Pink Unicorn invasion tomorrow. I guess we should shut this city down...just in case?
Yeah, I checked out the site, and sure enough most of the comments are this exact sentiment. It's amazing how many people are fucking stupid.
It's hotter than Florida.
What snow? We have maybe half the snowpack we usually get, which means California won't be getting any power this year they don't create themselves with solar or wind.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I'd say the folks in LI and North would not agree with the underwhelm part. NJ, where I live, fared better. I have 8 inches, 30 miles in (from the shore), that's about 40 miles at most from LI where they got the brunt of the storm. Weather in this area is a game of miles. Live on one side of the Raritan get one weather, live on the other see something else (and that's just feet).
the predicted amounts of snow is normal service in the mountains and they cope just fine, schools stay open when it dumps 1m of snow in the alps. yet with less than that predicted the people of the USA had driving on a road turned into a crime, public services closed down and mass panic spread via the propoganda wing of the gouverment. bravo.
Blame Louisiana, Mississippi and the 1000's of people who didn't heed the warnings of Hurricane Katrina.
You pretty much have to declare the end of the world to get some people to actually pay attention and help themselves.
.. I dunno the reports I saw ffor NYC were mentioning that the snow would look minor in the morning but turn worse thru the day, and the concern was tons of ppl stuck at work.
Can't say tho. I'm in boston area. got a foot here, drifts much higher. and dont expect it to stop until sometime tommorrow, so telecommuting at least 2 days
It's cheaper to tell people to not drive for a day and send plow guys out at the end of the day than it is to have plow guys out frequently. In Portland, ME I've been sitting in my office watching the CCTV on a spare monitor - I've seen 1 plow guy go down the road all day - it's only about a foot and a half of snow - enough that driving would be a pain but not really enough to close shop if the plow guys were out regularly.
The fact Dice has turned the "peers" of a "news for nerds" site into reddit-tier mentally-retarded commoners is part of the issue. Democracy doesn't work when you have too many morons.
lol soylent green is made of people
http://www.soylent.me/
there is the link of you want some
Politicians make fame and fortune, building their power base through FUD.
Fear
Uncertainty
Doubt
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
You were doing fine until you used Heritage.org as a reference. This is like using the Bible to explain dinosaurs.
Yeah, except we got an inch of fluffy powder.
Early predictions were 2 to 3 feet.
Later predictions were 8 inches to 2 feet.
Six hours before the snow stopped falling they dropped "predictions' to 3 to 5 inches
1 hour before the snow stopped falling they dropped it to one inch.
Meanwhile the 'omigod' Blizzard warning and threats of arrest for driving stayed in place the whole time.
In Manhattan the vehicle ban was great! We should do this once a week regardless of weather. Rather than an outright ban just extreme congestion pricing on Sundays.
Read the comments. Typical lying with statistics.
Also: it is perfectly possible to have the balls at the measured PSI without breaking the rules. Heat the room they are inflated in. Maybe use the sauna room. Perfectly legal, BY THE RULEZ!
Professional (and college, and olympic) sports is about the letter of the law, not the spirit. That is why sports is a ridiculous thing to pay attention to, but that is a different story.
The media inciting fear and panic over nothing?
That never happens.
"Terrorism Threat Levels", anyone?
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
Georgia is in Russia.
So the South is in Asia?
Apparently the idiots have mod points today. :P
WOOOOOOSH!
Religions is a losing proposition, unless you are the one raking in the cash and other perks.
Next time you are at reilgious services, look around to see if you can spot the suckers. If not, you are one of them.
I think this "science" of "meteorology" is a hoax. I demand a vote by congress!!!
Perfectly legal by the RULEZ!
Don't forget January 2014 when Atlanta's mayor took a wait and see approach to a storm and when it turned out worse than expected, he was excoriated for not taking it seriously enough.
Boston may have been hit somewhat, but further South — NYC and Philadelphia — the snowfall was rather underwhelming.
Further South conceptually? Ideologically? Along a timeline?
For a more than a decade now, NASA and the National Research Council have been saying that the loss of weather tracking satellites without them being replaced will affect the ability to monitor and predict weather events in the country. Some idiots in this country, instead of replacing these critical satellites, prefer to funnel even more taxpayer money to the extremely rich. Now, those same idiots complain when weather forecasting is off a little, suggesting it's all the governments fault.
There is a glint of irony to be had, if you can manage to not be blinded by the extreme stupidity.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
Another operant conditioning campaign to train us comply with whatever they want.
I am a bible-believing dinosaur, you insensitive clod!
You do realize you are whining?
Take your own advice.
Close to 2 feet here and still coming down.
I think people forget just how quickly a snowstorm can get serious if people don't stay off the road. If the plows can't keep up, you are driving first through a light dusting, then an inch, then a couple of inches. Sooner or later cars start to skid. Or, you will have a chunk of interstate that uphill and ONE car isn't able to make it up the hill, stops, cars behind it stop, etc.
Maybe it's not "historic" but it's a big serious snowstorm.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
In central mass north of Worcester I have gotten 3 feet and it is continuing to fall. There is so much snow I have no where to put it.
The inaccuracy in the prediction seems to be not about the magnitude of the storm, but about how far south it would hit (and, in particular, whether it would hit New York City).
Nice discussion of the various models' predictions here: http://fivethirtyeight.com/dat...
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I know they can't even predict what will happen tomorrow (did you hear about this east coast megablizzard????) but I'm terrified at their predictions of what will happen a century from now.
I can predict what will happen a century from now: you'll be dead.
For many things, a century is easier to predict than next week.
Think of all the ticket revenue the city can make. They should declare driving on public roads a crime every day.
The weather prediction is about probabilities, not clairvoyance. It isn't incorrect simply because the actual weather is different from the expected.
And with the way workers are (on average) treated by their employers, is is really such a bad thing that some people had a day off?
In the New Yorker view, New England and the rest of the country don't matter. Nothing west of the Hudson, and damn little east of the East River are worth a hoot.....
With 32.5" in Dracut, MA and it is still snowing strong, I hardly find that underwhelming, you insensitive clod.
Laugh all you want but the dinosaurs will tell you, oh wait, they wont ;D.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I'm in Boston as well and it basically unfolded exactly as predicted.
Note: this was a pretty tricky storm to forecast: it wasn't just a "system" that moved across from west to east like a lot of snowstorms do in the midwest (where I'm from). This thing was swirling off the coast and depended on a low pressure system combined with north/south winds on shore to make for "waves" of snow that washed onto the land. Definitely a really interesting beast.
As a computational scientist (I specialize in the types of multiphysics models that underly a lot of weather modeling) I can tell you that this type of thing is VERY hard to predict. I think they did a really good job here of informing the public and keeping people safe.
The message definitely worked here in the Boston area as everyone stayed home and was stocked up in case the power went out. Everything basically went smoothly despite the fact that 2-3 feet of snow fell in a densely populated area.
This is just basic NYC centric reporting. They happened to get a little less there than forecast (they still got several inches) so people are griping. If they hadn't made preparations and it had been as bad there as it is in Boston then we would have had a full-scale media blitz on how they screwed up this emergency management effort....
I'd suggest it all started going downhill when the courts reclassified News as Infotainment, and stated that it didn't have to be true.
We have gotten used to "slashvertisements", transparently thin submissions that hype some product or service.
Are now going to have to live with "slashvertorials", transparently thin submissions that hype some political viewpoint?
New York City was forecast to get 1-2 feet of snow, and got just under 10", while on the adjacent Long Island snow falls exceeding two feet have occurred. This is "scare mongering" based on "questionable models"? Really?
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
S.E. Connecticut here. 5 hours clearing the driveway (twice since more snow fell after my first round), shoveling the back deck clear of the 3.5 ft. drifts, clearing the front walk and porch, and most importantly, carving some paths into the back yard so the dog can take care of business without bounding around like a deer. Based on the average height in the open areas where drifting was less, and the part of the driveway away from the house, I'd say we got a about 20 inches. And everyone should experience the joy of hacking through the nearly 5 ft mound at the top of the driveway left by the snow ploughs.
I agree with rjejr - we got the blizzard.
Everybody dies -eventually-
http://www.songlyrics.com/old-dogs/still-gonna-die-1998-lyrics/
the second you used the phrase "government overreach", you gave away that you are, in fact, a right-wing (or libertarian-right) jerk who has no interest in anything other than discrediting the government so you don't have to pay taxes and exist as a member of this society.
to which I say, piss off.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
When was that?
Would you rather have some sort of Department of Truth to determine, what can and what can not be said?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
It's not all lost, though. My white collar company asked us to take a vacation day or work from home. No loss there. Food and other goods that I was going to buy today, I bought yesterday. No loss there. If I needed a plumber today, I'll get him in tomorrow. Manufacturing companies that have a backlog can add a Saturday shift or a night shift or extended shift to catch up output. If you were planning to fly today, you would need to make other arrangements anyway because of the weather. Basically, a one-day shutdown results economic activity "flowing" temporally and physically around the shutdown. There is some impact, but it is absurd to propose that 100% of a day's economic activity was lost. Let's say we lose 10-20 percent.
Now the value of life in plain economic terms should be different for New York City than, say, Springfield, MO. It would not surprise me that the number in NYC was 2x the national median. Now the math starts to look much different. $40M-$80M in lost productivity vs. $126M in life cost.
Looking at the 30 inches sitting in my driveway, I'll take exception to your use of the word "underwhelms". All they got wrong was that the storm drifted a little further east than expected.
The center of the storm was off by only 35 to 50 miles. If the snow dumped on Long Island, Connecticut, and Massachusetts had fallen more directly on NYC, the Jersey coast to the west, and the two northern counties up the Hudson, it would have been a much higher population density. This could easily have been a wintertime Hurricane Sandy, rather than Hurricane Irene (which also shifted to Long Island).
We probably deserved it. Wasted past lives. Hell, wasted present lives! Send shovels. I grew up in Minnesota, where this would be a cake walk, but out here it is like The Day After Tomorrow. Our County Executive robocalled every home phone in Suffolk -- over 400k homes -- and warned us to stay off the roads "after 11pm, on pain of arrest, because of the blizzard, except for emergencies." That seemed a bit gratuitous, given the blinding snow, the impenetrable roads, the fact that all desirable destinations had long since closed, and that most police were themselves in no condition to issue tickets. But it is conforting to know that if there were ever a real emergency, you can at least count on receiving a robocall from your County Executive.
Everyone should be glad it wasn't as bad as predicted. At least it had people going through the motions so that when the bad one hits people will hopefully know how to store food and and water etc when the bad storm does hit cause it will. Yeah it would be an inconvenience but hopefully worth it in the end.
All news outlets and "meteorologists" just parrot NWS forecasts.
That's simply false. At least most television stations in a moderately sized market have a fully qualified meteorologist who isn't afraid to contradict the NWS (and have a more accurate local forecast due to their focus).
Most weather prediction is based on gathered data crunched through various mathematical models, two of which are the GFS and the NAM. Yes, the NWS runs the GFS computer and recently put it through a huge upgrade. But that's because it takes a couple hundred teraflops to be able to run that every 4 hours. The human interpretation of that computer model is going to be vastly different, since not all weather modeling agrees - because they don't account for every possible variable. This is where the experienced meteorologist comes in.
Very often, the NWS is extremely conservative because they can't explain in great detail for every tiny region. A local meteorologist can explain why a situation may or may not happen and the reason why it's not certain. I live just East of the Mississippi and know almost nothing about meteorology. But I do follow an online forum run by a local tv meteorologist and have learned that even a few days out, the computer models don't have enough data to make a prediction for my area because the storm hasn't even made landfall in California yet. Then, it gets more accurate as it passes the Rockies. By then, the storm is 24-40 hours away and that's the most warning you get about uncertain events. And even then, they simply don't have an accurate enough simulation to determine the exact specifics.
Perfect accuracy isn't what's important. It's knowing what the worst case scenario is, and how likely it is you need to be prepared for it. It's better to be prepared and have nothing happen than to not be prepared when the worst happens. And it gets better all the time.
Do it for the children.
Every time our area gets a snow forecast, the announcement always is couched that a small shift in the storm will dramatically shift expected amounts, but the media always runs with the max numbers. Panic ensues.
I blame Obamacare
not underwhelming there. My brother's family spent the day in the truck keeping warm and my dad, well, he basically slept through it but under the covers was warm so.
No power for 12 hours, no phones for 8 hours, 70MPH winds, two feet of snow, ocean flooding. Good times.
As a resident of Minneapolis, I've been in occasional two-foot snowfalls. It is not a cake walk. It takes a day or two to get dug out and life back to normal.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Seriously, every god damned snowstorm is bestowed with a name now by these assholes from the Weather Channel.
Spent all day yesterday tring to avoid jerks declaring that history was being made.
It snowed. Can you imagine it? Something that never happened before. A thousand years from now, people will still be talking about Snowstorm Dipshit or whatever they are calling it.
But today, the weather is a commodity, something to make money from. So Meteorologists better have big boobs, nice legs, studly, or be able to stare at the camera and say "This is serious folks, do not take this 70 degree and sunny weather for granted. People have been killed enjoying nice weather, so prepare! Better yet, stay inside! It's just safer to stay safe! Lightning has been know to come from a blue sky!
My guess is some day, the Weather Channel and all the other weather assholes will create a massive panic, getting some town in the way of "The worst storm ever!!!!!!" to declare martial law, a few people get shot for disobeying it, and end up with a dusting of snow.
Rant off
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Not sure what you mean by "even the National Weather Service" - they were the ones who generated the original forecast. All news outlets and "meteorologists" just parrot NWS forecasts.
Parrot?
Don't think so. Places like the Weather Channel call in the troops, and try to spread as much fear as possible to get people to watch their panic parade.
Never got that from NWS or NOAA. Usually just possibilities, and canned preparation responses.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Boston may have been hit somewhat, but further South — NYC and Philadelphia — the snowfall was rather underwhelming.
Further South conceptually? Ideologically? Along a timeline?
More southerly. Southish if you prefer. Less Northicular, even.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
the predicted amounts of snow is normal service in the mountains and they cope just fine, schools stay open when it dumps 1m of snow in the alps. yet with less than that predicted the people of the USA had driving on a road turned into a crime, public services closed down and mass panic spread via the propoganda wing of the gouverment. bravo.
We've turned into cowardly pusses here.
Seriously, Drive by a US school after they let out for the year, and you see the sign in front say "Have a Safe Summer!"
Now there is a statement you can get behind. Not fun, Not busy, but safe.
We've cancelled school on forcasts for an inch of snow that don't happen.
Between safety culture and The Weather Channel, we're afraid of everything now. I'm maybe 500 miles away from Boston, and people were in the stores in a panic, buying milk and bread for the "Historical storm". In Boston, not here. Dunno why, but when it snows here, everyone has to go to the stores and buy all of the milk and bread...
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
>>WE ALL GONNA DIE!
Of course! Everyone does eventually!
you can't prove that scientifically. there is no consensus scientifically. every year that passes that i don't die disproves your liberal alarmist hypothesis it's just a fraud perpetrated by scientists to keep the research money coming in. anyone who tries to write a scientific paper that argues against the inevitability of death finds it won't get published.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I was so-hoping to get a real singuaritist response that I could counter-respont to. All I got is yours which I am pretty sure would earn me a woosh!