THE HISTORY BEHIND THE MYSTERY
This is a fun little exercise for today before focus shifts back to the next set of major events brewing for the week ahead. If you find yourself frustrated over 5, 10 and 15 day forecasts always changing and never seeming to match up with what really happens.... this is why. Excessive reliance on NOAA's GFS model. Makes life so much easier for many forecasters, just follow what the computer model says, make a few tweaks of your own so it can be claimed as a human forecast, and let it ride.
The above graphic is a collection of daily forecasts for this week in the Dundalk area posted by the Baltimore-Washington NWS over a period of 5 days starting Sunday. While there are some trends that were right on, the glaring errors which stand out are the potential 10 degree error on Saturday's forecast... originally thought to be 48 F, now is projected at 38 F.
(But wait, there's more... I just got a glimpse of the weekend forecast by the Weather Channel. It shows a high of 61 F and showers on Monday. What a hoot!) Remember that I'm the one charged with having these little emotional spells about weather forecasts, so you don't have to.
If you extrapolate this idea of heavy reliance on a model that routinely misses big pattern trends, then you can see why I get skeptical about the NWS winter weather forecasts. Supposing that 10 degree error was a difference between 38 and 28? Aha, now you get it. What looks like a rainstorm 3 days out turns into a snowstorm, and everyone says to each other... "Where did this come from, they weren't calling for any snow?" So now you know the history behind the mystery of constantly changing forecasts.
LOOKING FOR JUST THE WEATHER? A SPECIFIC FORECAST ON THE WEEKEND STORM IS IN THE PREVIOUS POST. SCROLL TOWARDS THE BOTTOM.
ANY WORD ON THE NEXT BIG KAHUNA? The weekend event will be no big storm, but it appears that March is going to roar in like a raging Lion, and winter is going to hang on for longer than you would think it should.