"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

Not their fault

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn global warming!

Re:Not their fault

[NotDrWho]

Not only that, but the heat has also clearly gotten to the brains of CNN's weather reporters. Just last night I saw one saying "Looks like we've got about a foot of snow so far," even as the camera panned down to show a dusting of snow barely covering the sidewalk. And another was saying "It's REALLY getting bad out here!" even as the background clearly showed no snow at all on the streets or sidewalks (or even falling), with people and traffic moving normally.

CAN'T YOU SEE THESE POOR WEATHER REPORTERS ARE SUFFERING FROM OBVIOUS HEATSTROKE, CNN??????

Re: Not their fault

[peragrin]

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 storm is highly variable too. 15 miles due north of me they have gotten 6 ".

Re: Not their fault

[MightyYar]

Yeah, but as a friend put it - no one is impressed when Boston gets snow.

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

[rwa2]

This.

I grew up in the DC metro area. Snowstorms in New England are notoriously hard to predict, especially nor'easters like this one (which are typically a combination of 2-3 storm systems).

Sure, you can see it coming down from the Midwest, but it's always hard to tell exactly what's going to happen to a blizzard after it stumbles over the Appalachian Mountains, which will divert some of it and squeeze some or all of the moisture out of it. Then it collides with some storm full of rain coming in from the North Atlantic. Then the wildcard is some sort of warmer air coming up from the south... It all collides over New England. The computer models can tell you what's going into the mix, but who knows exactly where it's going to transition from rain to snow? WHICH STORM WILL WIN?! A butterfly in Miami decides.

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.

Re:jessh

[Chandon Seldon]

Absoutely not.

Shutting a city down for a day *guarantees* huge damages. Let's look at Boston. There are 240,000 households, each with a median income of $70,000/yr. Let's use a really simplfied model, and say that there are 365 days in a year - so each day is about $200 per household in wages. That means that shutting down the city for a guarantees a loss of $48 millon.

For salaried workers, that's a loss for their employer. For hourly workers, that's a loss for the to the household.

Without a government intervention, people would have gotten to make their own judgement calls. And they could have made that judgement call based on the weather information this morning, not what we had yesterday afternoon. Based on the actual weather, lots of people would have said "lol, no - I'm not going into work today". And others would have made the completely reasonable decision that they could make it to work fine.

Re:jessh

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are you keeping your paper in the driveway?

Re:jessh

[mi]

At worst, people lose a day's worth of work, some businesses are affected.

The annual economic output of New York metro area alone (leaving Philadelphia aside for a minute) is about $1.4 trillion dollars — or about $4billion per day (weekdays such as today produce more than weekends). If even a mere 10% of that figure was lost today because of our rulers' failures, the cost is $400 million (for New York alone).

Possible severe damage to infrastructure

Little of such damage can be meaningfully prevented by shutting the infrastructure down. But even if it could be — and even the entire $60 million cost of the "Christmas Blizzard of 2010" could've been prevented by shutting the city down, it would've still been a pretty stupid thing to do — even if the storm actually lived up to the hype.

possible death toll

The "Christmas Blizzard of 2010" is imputed with 7 fatalities — or, in dollar terms, $63 million dollar, tops.

The best course of action by far is to shut the city down.

Hundreds vs. tens of millions of dollars lead to the exact opposite conclusion.

But there is more — individuals and businesses, made aware of the risks, can (and are supposed to!) make their own decisions. Governor declaring driving on a public road a crime is something else — they violate our freedom.

and who really expects a cabaret singer to have any knowledge of risk assessment

So, where do you sing?

Re:jessh

[quantaman]

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

I'm pretty sure it was implied that P(snowstorm) is high enough to make the cost/benefit rational.

Unless of course you think his comment would be better off at 4 times the length, detailing all of the obvious common sense assumptions he made.

Re: jessh

[superwiz]

How far is long island even from NYC?

an hour by train or 2 hours by car.

Re:jessh

[Altus]

It is not likely to be cost effective to keep cities open. Clearing snow at a pace that lets you keep the roads open is very costly and hard on the environment. Keeping public transit running is similarly expensive. The cost is productivity for a day but given that these days many people get work done at home the impact of that is somewhat less than it was in the past. We always used to shut down for the worst storms, sometimes the call was made late and people would get stuck. Now the balance has shifted so it makes more economic sense to shut down services for a day to let the snow pass and clear everything out for the next day.

Re:jessh

[dnavid]

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.

We dealt with cholera for even longer without all this public sanitation bling.

Re:jessh

[nblender]

Self respect.

This is far too easy

[Anonymous Coward]

NYC got only a few inches

That's what she said.

"Is that it?"
"Have you started yet?"

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

[MickyTheIdiot]

This isn't just media. Every decision made can be easily second guessed. The media does it and tons of "savvy" citizens on the Internet do the same thing. There is second guessing even when the call was made right.

If the failure went the other way and thousands were stranded or killed the EXACT SAME group of people would be bitching.

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.

Re:Boston Representing

[DeadlyFoez]

I live in Dracut, MA and I can tell you that we certainly have over 2 feet of snow here. Some of our snow drifts are as deep as 4.5 feet, and thats just what is in our yard. The wind is still blowing rather hard and the snow is still coming down pretty strongly. Some news stations are saying that Dracut has gotten the worst of this storm. I'm just lucky that we have not lost power.

Re:Boston Representing

[David_Hart]

I echo the comments by my fellow Slashdotters int he Boston area. I am in Lowell and we have about 2 feet of snow with windy weather and still more falling. So, it's quite possible that we will get the forecasted 3 feet.

That being said, I'm from Canada and 2 to 3 feet of snow wouldn't even shut down school when I was a kid. However, most cities, provinces/states have cut back drastically on their snow cleaning budgets. Back then they used to plow all the time to keep the roads open. These days they shut down the cities and then plow as the storm is ending.

Re:Boston Representing

[houghi]

http://imgur.com/gallery/ILX0g... That is boston.

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

[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.

Re:Someone will always be butthurt

[SternisheFan]

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.

In N.Y., Gov. Cuomo didn't want a repeat of last year when people got trapped overnight in a snowstorm on the Long Island Expressway, so he shut it and all unnecessary road travel down, which was later lifted. Politicians know to act proactively when it comes to acts of Mother Nature, or suffer the backlash of voters later.

Communicating probabilities

[Tablizer]

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.

Re:Communicating probabilities

[DMUTPeregrine]

They actually do this, just the reporters strip that out.

Re:Communicating probabilities

[BenFranske]

I'm guessing that you do not live in a location which regularly sees substantial snowfall. If you did you would realize that, at least with current models, this would be pretty much impossible. Snowfall amounts are one of the most difficult things to model and are notoriously incorrect.

Unlike precipitation like rain, where the density is always the same, with snow the ambient temperature and humidity level play a huge role in determining how dense the snowfall is (heavy wet snow vs light fluffy snow). We can predict the amount of water which will fall from the sky during a snowfall with the same probabilities, amounts, and accuracy as with summer rains (which we're reasonably good at). The problem is that depending on the density of the snow (which is much harder to predict) that same amount of water can give a snowfall of between 5 and 20 inches.

Hear Hear!

[dfenstrate]

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.

Re:Hear Hear!

[tehcyder]

I've got 20 inches and it's still going

Hmmm...

Re:Hear Hear!

[gmhowell]

I've got 20 inches and it's still going.

Four inches five times does not mean you've got 20 inches.

Re:Hear Hear!

[Rei]

Ah, Americans and their "mammoth snowstorms" - try living on a rock in the middle of the North Atlantic. You know what we call a snowstorm with gale-force winds and copious precipitation? Tuesday ;) Our last one was... let's see, all weekend. The northwest gets hit by another gale-force storm tomorrow. The southeast is predicted to get hurricane-force winds on Thursday morning.

Here's what the job of someone dispatched to maintain antennae for air traffic control services has to deal with here. ;) (those are guy wires)

Should have closed the stock market

[TomR teh Pirate]

That's the real victim today.

Not underwhelms, a little off predicted target...

[colordotmatrix]

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.

Re:Even the National Weather Service fucked it up

[Nemyst]

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.

Problem was underinvestment

[gurps_npc]

Up until recently, the US weather prediction was SIGNIFICANTLY inferior to European. They talked about the American Model vs the European Model, and the European Model was consistently correct.

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.

Re:Problem was underinvestment

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually the European model also predicted more snow. From the Wunderground blog,

The 7 am EST (12 UTC) Monday run of what is usually our top forecast model, the European model, predicted that the storm would track about 100 miles farther west than it actually did. The American GFS model, which just underwent a significant upgrade over the past month to give it increased horizontal resolution, performed better, putting the storm farther to the east. Forecasts that relied too heavily on the European model put too much snow over New York City.

Re:Problem was underinvestment

[Bigby]

I don't know what model was used, but AccuWeather and Wunderground were both predicting 8-16 in from Friday through Sunday. Despite this, all I heard was 24 in in the news and from politicians. I don't know where they got this information, because my information was not nearly as bad. We wound up getting about 6-7 in; the low side of the prediction. Even on the high side, it isn't crazy.

Shady Brady

[Tablizer]

Those damned Patriots under-inflated the snow machine!

It's global warming man! GLOBAL WARMING!

[Chas]

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!

Record Highs

[ISoldat53]

We are having record highs in the Puget Sound area. Highs in the upper 50s and even into the 60s.

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!

Sure you can!

[denzacar]

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.

Catch those meteorologists ...

[geantvert]

... and send them to Italy

Re:It's global warming man! GLOBAL WARMING!

[morgauxo]

>>WE ALL GONNA DIE!

Of course! Everyone does eventually!

From a resident of NYC

[rstanley]

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!

Re:Not underwhelms, a little off predicted target.

[SternisheFan]

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).

Re:you are a sick idiot

[tinkerghost]

Because people who live in NYC think the world ends at the outer boroughs.

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.

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.

News for nerds. Stuff that matters.

[MobyDisk]

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.

Re:It's global warming man! GLOBAL WARMING!

[Thud457]

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!

It's all Obama's fault, of course

[damn_registrars]

Clearly this was orchestrated by his illuminati in their interest of global domination. They'll be at your door soon for your mandatory abortion.

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.

Re:I am pissed off at the media over exaggeration!

[JWW]

Heh, with a quick glance, I read your first line as:

Histrionic Storm!

Re:News for nerds. Stuff that matters.

[MobyDisk]

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.

Big city thinking

[sjbe]

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.

Re:I am pissed off at the media over exaggeration!

[Dogtanian]

What I would like to have seen.
Estimated snow fall ranges.
Average expected snow fall to get
Standard Deviation of your estimate.
Confidence interval.
Burma Shave.

Where, when, what--

[Geoffrey.landis]

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...

Boston Representing

[friedmud]

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....

Re:It's global warming man! GLOBAL WARMING!

[gzuckier]

>>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.