"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.

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.

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!

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:Hear Hear!

[tehcyder]

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

Hmmm...

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 ".