April Fools Weather Forecast

Forecasts yesterday from Accuweather, Weather Channel, and National Weather Service (NWS) were for 6-12 inches or so of snow here in the Hudson Valley.  Much of the snow was to accumulate overnight with possible snowfall rates of an inch an hour from a classical Nor'easter racing up the coast.

All of us where I teach were frantically making plans to get stuff online or thinking about how to deal with yet another snow day (we're out of makeup days to use).  Everyone was complaining to me (since I'm department chair) even though I have no way of changing the weather or creating new makeup days!

April fools!  I wake up and there's not even a dusting of snow.  It's sort of raining and snowing out but nothing's sticking.  Yeah!  I do NOT want any more #&$*%! snow - I want warm spring breezes and a blue sky.

The NWS forecast discussion today says:

IT SEEMS THE ATMOSPHERE HAS TAUGHT US ANOTHER LESSON AS THIS NOR`EASTER WILL BE FURTHER OFFSHORE WITH ITS IMPACTS GREATLY DIMINISHED ACROSS MOST OF EASTERN NY. MODEL PERFORMANCE WAS LESS THAN IDEAL LEADING UP TO THIS EVENT...BUT IN THE END...OUR FORECAST MAY NOT HAVE LEAD UP TO EXPECTATIONS. WE WILL BE SURE TO EVALUATE THIS EVENT IN THE LESSONS LEARNED AND POST CASE STUDY WORK.

Accuweather is a bit more coy, they just redrew their map of snowfall accumulations shifting it to the east (New England may well get significant accumulations).

Just goes to show that even with scores of PhD meteorologists and supercomputers running sophisticated forecast models, nature will do as it damn well pleases.