There is a misconception in the United States that we have
various commercial entities to provide us with all of the weather data and
information that is needed. Some ignorant politicians have even said in the
past few years that we should get rid of the National Weather Service - we can
just turn on The Weather Channel after all, right? The problem behind that
theory is that The Weather Channel and every other weather entity uses all of
the data that we fund as taxpayers. Those are our radar towers, our computer
models, our weather balloons, our servers, our monitoring stations, and our
employees providing all of this information that they simply dissect and
analyze for your information (and increasingly for your entertainment). In many
cases we have government employees doing the analysis part as well and often
far better than those you find on television because they are focused on
nothing except getting the forecast correct for the region they work in every
day. It is absolutely vital that we fund such essential systems in order to
keep our country functional on the most basic levels. It saves thousands upon
thousands of lives every year as well.
The leader of the National Weather Service's Southern region was recently fired
for allegedly legitimate reasons that seem a little suspicious as you can read
in this Washington Post article. William Proenza had planned to limit radar
usage on sunny and calm days in order to cover budget gaps and it seems the NWS
did not particularly care for that idea. The piece highlights the $85 billion
cut the NWS is going to be hit with. In my opinion, considering the cost of
cleaning up after the parade of historic storms that has hit this country in
the last decade (not to mention all of the lives lost and countless saved) it
seems impractical to make such drastic cuts even in this financial climate.
Apart from not cutting technology coverage, employees, or
services, the NWS could really use an upgrade and expansion in many areas. The
Automated Surface Observing System (ASOS) is the primary method we use to
record climate data, and while these stations are useful, they are severely
limited during extreme weather conditions. They failed repeatedly during the
Blizzard of 2013 whether it was frozen instrumentation falsifying wind speeds
(at many places but even Boston's Logan Airport hitting around "100MPH") or
stations recording incorrect basic observations (light snow and freezing fog
during the true blizzard conditions at the one at Sikorsky Memorial Airport in
Stratford). When it fails this regularly what are we supposed to use as
baseline data? I am sorry to say much of what is recorded by the ASOS is highly
suspect to me. While we can weed out the obvious mistakes they make what we
miss while these errors are occurring is the real data we need.
Another tremendous failing is some of our modeling as the
American computers, like the Global Forecasting System (GFS), cannot compare to
the famed European model. This is not an arbitrary or subjective statement as
you can see by looking at the graphs of Numerical Weather Prediction Model Verification here presented by Environment Canada. The ECMWF leads the way as usual with the
ETA (North American Model or NAM) sticking out like a sore thumb in the worst
way possible. Just days ago on The Weather Channel Meteorologists Chris Warren
and Jim Cantore discussed the failings of the GFS and how much we rely on the
Euro to correctly forecast the weather for our nation over our own products as
the GFS failed once again with another storm on the east coast.
As they mention we will hopefully move in a better direction in terms of modeling soon with changes in leadership and new directives. My last and most maddening point brings us back to the Blizzard of 2013 and depicts both the internal struggle that occurs within the National Weather Service and some of the antiquated methods and systems we have in place in America. The Northeast Snowfall Impact Scale was created by Paul Kocin and Louis Uccellini and presented in Northeast Snowstorms in 2004 in order to ascertain the effect a system had on the nation and its people as it utilizes population and area to gauge and rank snowstorms. This is all well and good but take a look at this NOAA map and tell me what's wrong with it.
No, those numbers are not off by 10 each - this is the real
map! The one red dot of 30 inches in Connecticut is centered on KBDR
(Bridgeport's climate station which is actually in Stratford at the Sikorsky
Memorial Airport but is measured by an individual who is a few miles north of
Long Island Sound - how utterly ridiculous is that in itself?) as apparently none of the state
received over 30 inches of snow. We all know this is not true, but for
"official" purposes thanks to the lack of stations in the area, poor
measurements, and too few resources, we end up with this atrocity. Look, I am
all for standards and practices that need to be repeated through time and
completely comprehend why we cannot take random numbers people measure and send
in then put them as official data forever into eternity, but I am also for
accuracy. This is far from the historical representation we need, and if our
system works this poorly, it is time for a tremendous change.
On the other hand Brandon Vincent of NWS Raleigh, North
Carolina, put out this unofficial storm total snowfall accumulation map which
fits in closely with the reality we had in Connecticut.
Thank you, Brandon, for helping to keep a little sanity in
the weather archives of the NWS. I hope the past few years of difficult and
severe weather helps to spur some meaningful change in America's stagnant and often
archaic meteorological bureaucracy and we can avoid harming it further.
Scott Kruitbosch
Conservation Technician
Conservation Technician
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