"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?

Comments

jessh

[MickyTheIdiot]

...except there IS a mammoth snowstorm in other parts of New England.

The 21st Century: the Century of Whiners.

Re:jessh

[Nemyst]

Yeah, this was absolutely the right call. There were four possible scenarios here:

• -There is no snowstorm 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 snowstorm and the officials leave the city running. Nothing happens, nobody notices.
• -There is a snowstorm and the officials shut the city down. Everyone congratulates them for their foresight.
• -There is a snowstorm 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.

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?).

Re:jessh

[Anonymous Coward]

According to your logic, officials should shut the city down if there is even a tiny chance of a snowstorm.

Re: jessh

[peragrin]

No but a reasonable chance. Look at what different areas are getting around nyc. You might be surprised at how much they are getting and nyc didn't.

Re:jessh

[executioner]

when did we become a nation of wimps? we dealt with snowstorms for decades without shutting down at the mere hint of a blizzard. this country is going soft catering to whiners.

Re:jessh

[Anonymous Coward]

The collateral damage from scenario #1 in your list is that people are additionally desensitized to future warnings.

It happens so frequently that I ignore storm warnings entirely until I actually see some snow.

Re:jessh

[ShadowRangerRIT]

we died in snowstorms for decades without shutting down at the mere hint of a blizzard

FTFY.

Boston Representing

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Boston Representing

[Anonymous Coward]

+1 for you if i could login and had mod points.

No matter what was done some group would be very vocal about how it was not the right thing to do.

Call a state disaster and close the roads but the storm is less then expected - Complain
Dont call a disisaster and lave the roads open and the storm is really bad - Complain.

Oddly enough, those same group of people dont take their vast meteorological knowledge to places like the national weather service where it could be put to better use.

Weather is unpredictable

[PvtVoid]

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.

Re:Weather is unpredictable

[Anonymous Coward]

If the threat of bad whether justifies a travel ban, just think of the other threats that can be used to justify such a ban or even worse. It's just a bad precedent. There needs to be a concrete threat to safety and infrastructure, while that may not be most efficient or ideal, it's a free country and it stays free until no other options exist. It's hard to say we live in a free country when the government can take such drastic measures on a whim.

Re:Weather is unpredictable

[hawkfish]

If the threat of bad whether justifies a travel ban, just think of the other threats that can be used to justify such a ban or even worse. It's just a bad precedent. There needs to be a concrete threat to safety and infrastructure, while that may not be most efficient or ideal, it's a free country and it stays free until no other options exist. It's hard to say we live in a free country when the government can take such drastic measures on a whim.

It's also hard to say you live in a free country when you expect the government to bail out your sorry ass whenever you do something stupid like try to drive 500 miles in blizzard. (And yes, I grew up in update NY and central NH and I do know what I'm talking about...)

Re:Weather is unpredictable

[Overzeetop]

I would agree, but only if we can let all the people who get stuck in a predictable storm die of hypothermia on the roads. Except, of course, nobody will let that happen. We'll spend millions of dollars and possibly endanger rescuer's lives to save them.

"Charge them the cost," I hear you cry? Yeah, that's not really going to go over well, and the lawyer's fees will dwarf anything we might recoup - not to mention pretty much guaranteeing whomever is in charge will never be elected to office again.

No - you (and I mean both you, personally, AC, as well as most of humanity) is too fucking stupid to stay safe, so the government is doing it for you. If you weren't so stupid in every. single. disaster. it might not be necessary. But utterly braindead humans show up every time. So stop blaming the evil gubmint - blame yourself and the dumb bitch next door. You're the reason these bans are put into place.

Re:Weather is unpredictable

[sjames]

There's also the brain dead employers that are just sure their dollar store will be swamped with customers because they have a sale of pool floaties scheduled and so all employees are to report on time or be fired. Naturally, they don't report themselves, they plan to phone it in.

A ban protects all of those people from artificially adverse consequences of behaving reasonably.

It takes time to prepare

[jfdavis668]

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.

Someone will always be butthurt

[Scutter]

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.

Quality Journalimism

[American AC in Paris]

"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.

Re:Quality Journalimism

[Layzej]

My favourite part of the post is "exceeding the threshold of honest mistake" - implying that there was some dishonest conspiracy between the various weather agencies to over-predict. For what nefarious reason, we can only speculate... and who is the mastermind behind this? Maybe George Soros is trying to drive down the price of auto dealerships so that he can get them at a steal, but we can't know for sure. Al we know for sure is:

1. 1) Rig all weather forecasts so that cities shut down the roads.

1. 2) ???

1. 3) Profit!

Re:Not underwhelms, a little off predicted target.

[rjejr]

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.