YES!!!!!!!!!!!!!

This question was asked last week by a Cleveland reporter (source). He asked if the service provided by the National Weather Service should be free, as privatized companies, such as Accuweather, WSI, and The Weather Channel, provide a paid service.  Granted he supports the NWS, and provides emphasis on that support in this week’s article. However my view on this issue can be best highlight by this comment by WEATHERFAN:

“WEATHERFAN: Hmm, interesting proposition – shut down the National Weather Service and let commercial, fee-based forecasting companies take over. Now, if you shut down the NWS, there’d be no more weather ballons, no more satellites, no more radar systems, no more DOPPLER radar, no more ASOS (oops, now its gonna affect the FAA). No more free data to the world. Will Accuweather put its own satellites into the atmosphere, send up its own weather ballons, and build its own Doppler system? …”

Let’s enhance this argument by looking at just some of Accuweather‘s products:

• Forecast:  Based on either the NAM or GFS model, provided by NCEP, which is part of NOAA
• Radar: Based on a network of WSR-88D radars run by the National Weather Service and Radar Operations Center, which is part of NOAA
• Maps -> Satellite: Based on the GOES Satellite run by NESDIS, which is part of NOAA
• Maps -> Surface: Based on an analysis provided by the HPC, which is part of NOAA
• Extreme Weather-> Severe Weather Center: Based on analysis provided by the Storm Prediction Center, which is a part of NOAA
• Extreme Weather -> Hurricane Center: Based on analysis provided by the National Hurricane Center, which is a part of NOAA

DID I MENTION THAT THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE IS PART OF NOAA TOO!?!?!?

So why go to a website that has ads and the ability to get “High Definition” radar (no such thing by the way), where you can go to www.weather.gov and get everything from there for FREE! Plus you don’t have to pay 10 bucks to find out there’s a tornado near your house.

Here’s the kicker. Why would we pay for a service that claims they can do 15 day forecasts? Just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be…

6 HOUR GFS FORECAST

384 HOUR GFS FORECAST

I wouldn’t trust it would you? Apparently Accuweather does, and they want us to pay for it.

Plymouth overall saw 10-15 inches of snow (depending on where you were). Down south there was much less, but they also had to deal with some ice issues. The timing of my snowfall forecast was good. I woke up Wednesday morning to only a dusting. Winds varied between 5 and 10 mph throughout the day, but were primarily from the SSE. By the evening we saw about 9 inches on the ground. There was another 3-4 inches overnight, and the winds shifted from SSE to WNW, due to the frontal passage. Today we saw a clear day with “warming” temperatures. Winds were gusty from the W all day.

Let’s see how I did with the high and low temps. I’ll be verifying against Boyd Hall, and another forecast Norman Shippee did.

The only one that appears to be busted is the Wednesday Night forecast, I was off by 10 degrees. I believe it was because the clouds stuck around longer than expected, keeping the infrared radiation in and limiting the temperature from falling.

As for the future, we are going to see a lot of warming…by that I mean above freezing kind of warming. The GFS is showing a big storm coming up the coast next Tuesday. And if the temperatures are still warm, we may even see a rain event. More on this later!

Looking at this morning’s skew t diagram, it is clear that radiational cooling is present, indicated by the green oval above. However the temperature got a lot colder than forecasted:

So why did the method not work? Well I can think of 2 main reasons. First, we excluded the arctic air mass in the forecasting steps, if we added another 5 degrees, that would have brought us down to -7, making it a closer forecast for Boyd Hall. Also, the 850mb temperatures are not 100% reliable, as warm air advection at that level could mess up the results at the surface. So while this technique is somewhat decent, it should be used carefully.

Oh man has it been cold. And Plymouth Airport (K1P1) Has been much colder than the Boyd observation, due to the airport being in the valley of the Baker River. Their low this morning was -27°F!

Fortunately the 850mb temps will begin to warm up over the next 24-36 hours. So we could see highs in the teens and 20′s again…YAY!