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Winter WX January 29-30 Southeast Event

Evan

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Meteorologists are going to get absolutely blasted for this.

Of course they will. The general public is not very bright, and the dumber someone happens to be seems to directly correlate with how loudly they scream at experts on social media over prognostications they themselves are too witless to understand.

Spann will be choking people out on Twitter with his bust (1/4") vs boom (5") graphic as it demonstrates how hard he tried to convey uncertainty about this event. But, we all know only around 5-10% of Alabama's population can actually comprehend a nuanced prediction like that. By this afternoon, there will be dozens of people claiming Spann called for a foot of snow.

God love the people of Alabama, because no one else would ever want to have to put up with our ignorance.
 

Evan

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Someone ia going to get dumped on with 3+ inches. Precip rapidly changing to all snow per KBMX NEXRAD.

Scorchingly bad hot-take by me.
 
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pritchlaw

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JP and the Fox crew gonna get run for that whiff of a model that showed a strip of over 4 inches right through the most populated party of their viewing area.
 

Evan

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Another good example of the fact that a system in which the cold air has to chase down the precip rarely works out.

If Meteorologists here in AL wanted to avoid criticism from the general public, they'd never forecast snow (especially this type of setup) unless there is a low in the Gulf. They'd be right 95%+ of the time, and if snowed, most people would be too happy to complain.

But, they can't do that because of the risk to public safety. I actually think Spann had gotten into the habit of doing that exact thing before Snowmageddon, and it burnt him badly when people ended up trapped at work, kids trapped at schools, etc.
 

skelly

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If Meteorologists here in AL wanted to avoid criticism from the general public, they'd never forecast snow (especially this type of setup) unless there is a low in the Gulf. They'd be right 95%+ of the time, and if snowed, most people would be too happy to complain.

But, they can't do that because of the risk to public safety. I actually think Spann had gotten into the habit of doing that exact thing before Snowmageddon, and it burnt him badly when people ended up trapped at work, kids trapped at schools, etc.

This happens on Craigslist a lot Post just shows up repeatedly. This goes down as one of the all time busts if you ask me but truly it shouldn’t have been in hindsight we’ve been down this crazy road before as many have said so don’t feel like jumping but some repelling would be fun.
 

AL_ham_op

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Just as I said all along. You can't tell me we're going to be sitting at 60 degrees and sunny and then somehow have 4 inches of snow on the ground less than 12 hours later.

I don't care what the models show, that just doesn't make sense.
 

Gail

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Well, my kids are out so school for no reason at all. I’m not upset about that, just jealous we only had a delayed start and not out too.

It’s amazing how quickly the models changed during real time. This consistently looked like a sure thing for days. It’s disappointing one of our few shots of winter weather didn’t pan out, but I’m glad I won’t have the public to answer to. People are going to be upset. I feel bad for the local meteorologists.
 

KoD

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Y'all there's still a chance. If we each go buy some dry ice from ... We could make it look like ... Oh nevermind.
 

Taylor Campbell

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This was an always changing forecast. There was always that concern if the cold air would catch up with the precipitation. Ensemble guidance on the globals showed both camps well of what could have happened, and the Canadian model has been wonderful this year with our snow forecast. Some should have given all that, and the short term model guidance more credit. There was definently potential for there to be a good snow, but there was just as much potential for a no show. The forecast to me was a very low confidence forecast, and thus why I never got excited about it. Cold chasing moisture has provided good snows in the past, but this was a very questionable one.
 
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This was an always changing forecast. There was always that concern if the cold air would catch up with the precipitation. Ensemble guidance on the globals showed both camps well of what could have happened, and the Canadian model has been wonderful this year with our snow forecast. Some should have given all that, and the short term model guidance more credit. There was definently potential for there to be a good snow, but there was just as much potential for a no show. The forecast to me was a very low confidence forecast, and thus why I never got excited about it. Cold chasing moisture has provided good snows in the past, but this was a very questionable one.
Yeah. Cold air chasing moisture. Never works out to good ....
 

Evan

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Just as I said all along. You can't tell me we're going to be sitting at 60 degrees and sunny and then somehow have 4 inches of snow on the ground less than 12 hours later.

I don't care what the models show, that just doesn't make sense.

You're quite wrong, actually. That's not why we didn't receive accumulating snow. The line between not receiving any snow, or having appreciable accumulation had nothing to do with the high temperature from the day before. This event relied on precipitation bringing colder (below freezing) air aloft down to the surface. For that to occur, the sub-freezing air in the higher levels of the atmosphere had to crash in early enough that the precipitation could bring the cold air down before drying out or moving on, and the result would be accumulating snow.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you're making assumptions about why people didn't get snow, but those assumptions are badly flawed. Making those same mistakes assumptions in March of 93 would've been disastrous.

Surface temps from the day before are NOT why people didn't receive accumulating snow.
 

AL_ham_op

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You're quite wrong, actually. That's not why we didn't receive accumulating snow. The line between not receiving any snow, or having appreciable accumulation had nothing to do with the high temperature from the day before. This event relied on precipitation bringing colder (below freezing) air aloft down to the surface. For that to occur, the sub-freezing air in the higher levels of the atmosphere had to crash in early enough that the precipitation could bring the cold air down before drying out or moving on, and the result would be accumulating snow.

I'm not trying to be a jerk, but you're making assumptions about why people didn't get snow, but those assumptions are badly flawed. Making those same mistakes assumptions in March of 93 would've been disastrous.

Surface temps from the day before are NOT why people didn't receive accumulating snow.
Sorry, but JP Dice literally said on the air just now that ground temps were part of the reason we did not have accumulating snow here. Ground temps were just too warm for this.
 

Jacob

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Sorry, but JP Dice literally said on the air just now that ground temps were part of the reason we did not have accumulating snow here. Ground temps were just too warm for this.

Ground temps were already predicted to be warm beforehand, yesterday's weather didn't jump up and surprise anybody.

You were correct (on no accumulating snow) for the wrong reasons.
 

Jacob

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Just as I said all along. You can't tell me we're going to be sitting at 60 degrees and sunny and then somehow have 4 inches of snow on the ground less than 12 hours later.

I don't care what the models show, that just doesn't make sense.

Also, it has snowed multiple times here in the south after a very warm day like yesterday.
 

Taylor Campbell

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I read on Facebook that is snowed heavily in Birmingham for two hours, but there was no accumulation. Is that true? Was there acutually a heavy snow for two hours?
 

Evan

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Sorry, but JP Dice literally said on the air just now that ground temps were part of the reason we did not have accumulating snow here. Ground temps were just too warm for this.

Either you misunderstood him or you left out context he added.

Ground temps are not why we didn't have accumulating snow unless he said that in the context of why 15 minutes of snow didn't lead to accumulations.

Zero chance he said we what you're claiming in reference to why this system didn't produce.

You're obviously entitled to your own opinion.

Ground temps being too warm were of little relevance with this system outside of how much initial snowfall would be lost before surface temperatures sustained accumulating snowfall. The reason is that snowfall rates were expected to be quite heavy for a brief period of time, and 850 temps were expected to be -1 to - 3 degrees Celsius allowing for plenty of cold air to be brought down to the surface.

The reason surface temps had nothing to do with this system's failure is because we never got far enough along for them to matter that much. Sub-freezing upper air temps weren't in place in line with the precipitation, so that severely attenuated the threat.

We've had plenty of snows that came after 50/60 degree days. We've also had plenty of events in which our temperature was 40 degrees the day before, but still only ended up with a cold rain. There's also many other possibilities that exist in which varying surface or upper air temps lead to other forms of frozen precipitation, or specific issues that prevent accumulating snowfall. But today's system most assuredly wasn't about surface temperatures.

Edit: let me add that we're all here to share and learn. No one is trying to give you a hard time, but your claim about surface temps has the ability to mislead others about what went wrong here. When things don't go according to plan, we have to dig in to understand why the forecast failed, and then learn from it so we can recognize a similar problem in the future.

Granted, a lot of us have been burned so many times by these types of systems that our expectations were low. But each setup is different and recognizing the key differences and nuance is why we have professionals.
 
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