fr/Martin Thoughts on Winter Forecast

 

Interesting take on the whole question of long term forecasting, particularly at this time when so much is changing, the abnormal has become normal, and anomalies are routine.

2011-2012 Winter Forecast from TheWeatherSpace.com released

Published on September 8, 2011 3:35 am PT
– By Kevin Martin – Senior Meteorologist
– Article Editor and Approved – Warren Miller


Click for larger image

(TheWeatherSpace.com) — Winter forecasting is probably the most useless forecasting one can do and I’ll give you the reason why.

Every year hundreds of weather forecasters shoot out forecasts for snow in the Northeast. Why? Snow happens all the time during the Winter!

The truth of the matter is that TheWeatherSpace.com believes producing such forecasts are useless. So the 2011-2012 forecast for winter is sometimes cold, sometimes warm, sometimes snowy, sometimes icy, sometimes windy, sometimes dry, sometimes rainy, and sometimes snowy.

Winter forecasts are as useless as long range hurricane forecasts. We just do not need them. What people really care about is the accuracy in the next three to five days, that is it.

Sure, farmers rely on long range forecasts but no one is 100% accurate in a winter forecast. There are times when people forecast Southern California in a La Nina to have dry and warm conditions and yet Los Angeles gets blasted by cold air, thunderstorms, low elevation snow, and above average precipitation.

Winter season cannot be forecast and the best thing we can do is take what comes at us and warn for what we see. Sometimes it will snow, other times it will not. The winter seasons have troughs and ridges which change each week to a different scenario.

This is not meant to be a joke to you from TheWeatherSpace.com, but a real thing to think about. Do we need long range forecasts when it changes each week? In my eyes we do not so let us take and forecast what is in reality, three, five, seven, and ten days down the line
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fr/http://www.theweatherspace.com/news/TWS-09_08_2011_longrange.html/