In the wild world of winter weather, location is everything, which New York and Massachusetts learned too well Tuesday.
Small last-minute changes in the air morphed a storm that was supposed to drop several feet of snow – not several inches – in New York and led one forecaster to apologize, the National Weather Service boss to get defensive, politicians to explain themselves and some Northeast residents wondering where the much-hyped snow went.
The not-so-great blizzard of 2015 did wallop other parts of the Northeast as predicted.
But snowfall in the self-absorbed media capital of New York City, shut down in advance, was under a foot. New Jersey and Philadelphia also were spared.
In a conference call with reporters Tuesday, National Weather Service Director Louis Uccellini, who wrote textbooks on winter storms, wouldn’t say his agency’s forecast was off. Instead, he blamed the way meteorologists communicated and said the weather service needs to do a better job addressing uncertainty.
Private meteorologist Ryan Maue of Weather Bell Analytics slammed the public agency for ratcheting up forecast storm amounts before the system arrived, instead of telling people how uncertain it was.
“The public should be upset that the forecast was blown for NYC and ask for answers,” he said in an email.
Uccellini said the agency would review those procedures and consult with social scientists to improve messaging.
But Uccellini said he’d rather warn too much and be wrong, than not warn enough. He said the weather service’s predictions and citywide closures that they prompted made for a faster recovery.
“This was the right forecast decision to make,” Uccellini said.
New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie defended his decision to ban travel on all state roads.
“I was being told as late as 9 o’clock last night that we were looking at 20-inch accumulations in most of New Jersey. If, in fact, that is what would have happened, having these types of things in effect were absolutely the right decision to make,” Christie told WABC-TV on Tuesday. “We were acting based on what we were being told.”
A National Weather Service forecaster who was called a hero of 2012’s Superstorm Sandy tweeted an apology for the errant forecast.
“You made a lot of tough decisions expecting us to get it right, and we didn’t. Once again, I’m sorry,” wrote Gary Szatkowski, a National Weather Service forecaster in Mount Holly, New Jersey.
Uccellini downplayed Szatkowski’s apology.
The storm spun up in the ocean, where there are few monitors to help meteorologists and computer models pinpoint the track, forecasters said. In such a storm, an error of 50 miles “can be a big difference,” said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of the private service Weather Underground.
Late Monday, the computer models started to move the storm more east and away from New York City, but by that time “media and social media hype was out of the bottle,” said University of Georgia meteorology professor Marshall Shepherd.
The European computer model that was praised for accurately forecasting Superstorm Sandy failed more than others, Masters said.
“It’s just that we didn’t get the western edge of the forecast correct. If you want to call that a bust, I think you’re being a little harsh,” Masters said.
Robinson, Shepherd and others said meteorologists probably erred more in the way they relayed the forecast to the public than the prediction itself.
“In reality, nothing went wrong, the models were always iffy in NYC area,” Shepherd said in an email. “We just have to do a better job of communicating the story.”
Not good enough, said some unhappy commuters waiting for the first PATH trains to leave Jersey City for New York on Tuesday.
Vikram Kanagala, 33, who works in finance, said he was frustrated by officials’ response.
“Definitely unacceptable,” he said. “I think they should have done a better job with real-world decisions.”
Brandon Bhajan, a security guard in New York City, wasn’t upset. “I don’t think they (city) overblew it,” he said. “I think it’s like the situation with Ebola ... if you over-cover, people are ready and prepared.”
