"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

[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 ".

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

[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

[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

[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?

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

[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

[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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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!

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: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.

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.