Ralph's Weather wrote:I looked back and looks like we started seeing signs of our pattern change around 1/23 (~pg115) for the next week inconsistent signs were there but had the heart of the cold being last week. By the last few days of Jan and early Feb we had a good idea on this though timing was last weekend. Besides ECMWF models had a really good handle on things by 2/8. Anyone (especially people in power) that says they had no idea this was coming is ignorant at best and at worst negligent. I know many in power rely on the ECMWF but that is their own bias, decisions have to be based on data from all reliable sources not just your favorite one.
Unfortunately like hurricane forecasters here on the coast, they are in a damned if they do and damned if they don't situation. It's been proven over and over again that when a to board of warning is posted and then the event is not as bad as predicted, they treat the next warning as "a cry wolf" and ignore it the next time. I kind of understand now why some TV Mets during hurricane season will throw the models out there as cover to blame it on the models if it doesn't materialize. I like to think it's more of trying to get the public to pay attention and then came back and say , yea the model missed us by X miles but the next one might not. Perhaps they will be treating some of the winter weather events like this from now on and say this model says it will be 50 degrees by this time next week, but these other three say we will be stuck in the 20's with a few inches of snow on the ground... One out of the four say this outcome, so prepare for the colder solution. I will say with tropical forecast one thing that doesn't help is the sensationalized coverage of the event and the publics misunderstanding of how broad or limited a storm can be. Just because they see a big cloud circulation coming towards you doesn't mean you are going to get the worst of the weather. Harvey only had it's most damaging winds fifty or so miles from it's center, and some people in the south part of Corpus were like this is no big deal not appreciating the fact that a shift of only few miles would have put them in a world of hurt. But for the new comers to the area or the ones who still on that side of town, they still haven't felt or appreciate the full force of a major hurricane (unless they actually visited Port A or Rockport post storm) because that part of town hasn't been involved in one since 1970.
But yes a number of private forecasters were concerned about this even more so than the NWS offices in some locales. I think I even posted that Austin/ San Antonio and Corpus were kind of unimpressed about the prospects of how cold this would be and this was with many of us seeing the UKMET, Canadian, German and GFS screaming some numbers that were off the charts that came true now to later be joined by the former King.
The posts in this forum are NOT official forecast and should not be used as such. They are just the opinion of the poster and may or may not be backed by sound meteorological data. They are NOT endorsed by any professional institution or 
), can you please help us thaw out starting this weekend? I love snow, but this is too much! 
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Use a ruler for proper measurements.
