Post by: Desertdog on December 30, 2006, 05:14:42 PM
Not only this forecast, but the complete 2006 hurricane forecast was 100% wrong.
I guess global warming did them in, again.
Snow just keeps piling on in Denver and Rockies
By Los Angeles Times and The Washington Post
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003501918_snow30.html
WILL POWERS / AP
The second major snow storm in a week pounded Colorado on Friday, disrupting flights at Denver's airport on Friday.
DENVER Just after Thanksgiving, climatologist Klaus Wolter released his long-term forecast for the Denver region. The next few months, he said, would be warm and dry. No big snows until at least late February.
Oops.
Denver and smaller communities along the front range of the Rockies hunkered under a thick padding of snow and ice Friday, buried by the second monster storm in a week, with more snow expected overnight. Colorado Gov. Bill Owens declared a statewide disaster.
Hundreds of flights at Denver International Airport were canceled; major highways were temporarily shut down, including a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 70 into Kansas. All Greyhound bus trips out of Denver were canceled.
And, under leaden skies, residents grimly shoveled out. Again.
"It's been a tough week," Denver Councilwoman Rosemary Rodriguez said.
From his office at the University of Colorado in Boulder, Wolter tried to explain where his forecast had gone wrong.
"I wish I could say I was misquoted," he said. Instead, he could only conclude that Mother Nature had pulled a fast one. Scouring meteorological records, Wolter found that it has been at least 100 years since the region has been hit with back-to-back midwinter storms of this intensity. "It's unprecedented," he said.
Up in mountain-resort towns such as Aspen and Vail, skiers had a different word for the double-barreled blast: phenomenal.
"The ski conditions are fantastic," said Molly Cuffe, of the trade group Colorado Ski Country USA.
At the Denver airport, the nation's fifth-busiest passenger hub, nearly 300 flights were canceled because the weather forced incoming planes to go elsewhere. But unlike last week's storm, which closed the airport for a record 45 hours and left thousands of travelers to sleep on benches and baggage carousels, the airport did not cease operations Friday.
Managers said more than 80 percent of scheduled flights were expected to operate over the weekend.
Winter storm warnings extended from New Mexico to South Dakota, and blizzard conditions were forecast for the eastern Colorado plains and parts of southwestern Nebraska, western Kansas and the Texas and Oklahoma panhandles.
Tornado watches were issued for parts of Texas and Oklahoma on Friday evening as the leading edge of the storm approached. A tornado killed one person when it struck a home in west Texas, authorities said.
The latest storm was less problematic than the Christmas week blizzard because it came in waves, with a foot or more of snow Thursday and several additional inches expected overnight Friday.
The lull gave plows a chance to catch up. Also, the wind was mild, nothing like the powerful gusts of last week, which tossed the snow around so ferociously that airport runways could not be kept clear.
Still, there were disruptions. Unable to get fuel deliveries, gas stations across the city and suburbs were shut down Friday. Many groceries were out of staples.
Government offices and businesses closed Friday in Denver and other Colorado cities. The almost total absence of traffic on Denver streets made life a little easier for snowplows dispatched by Denver's mayor, John Hickenlooper.
The popular mayor ran into the first major criticism of his political career this week for the city's failure to clear snow left by the pre-Christmas storm. Facing an election for his second term in May, Hickenlooper promised this weekend's dig-out would be better than the previous effort.
Post by: Parker Dean on December 30, 2006, 05:25:58 PM
Post by: MechAg94 on December 30, 2006, 05:29:58 PM
Post by: HankB on December 30, 2006, 06:29:25 PM
Yeah, but see it's because of American-Caused Global Warming (might as well say what they mean) that they can't get the forecasts right.
Exactly right . . . normally they would have been completely accurate when, after 2005 in which we saw major storms like Katrina and Rita hit the USA, the "experts" forecast 2006 to be even worse because of global warming. But because of global warming, their forecast model was off, and no hurricanes hit the USA. See . . . if 2006 had been worse, it would have been global warming's fault. But it wasn't, so global warming is again to blame.
Post by: Bogie on December 30, 2006, 06:45:59 PM
You know, a good half-bottle of wine is a serious aid to posting...
Post by: mfree on December 30, 2006, 07:01:37 PM
DAMMIT, which is it? 100 years ago, or unprecedented!
Sometimes I want to throttle these people.
Post by: Declaration Day on December 30, 2006, 07:14:55 PM
Post by: crt360 on December 31, 2006, 07:13:16 AM
Here in central Texas, I'm used to seeing one every once in a while, but not at the end of December.
Post by: mtnbkr on December 31, 2006, 08:06:05 AM
Hey, it was funny at the time.
Chris
Post by: MechAg94 on December 31, 2006, 08:27:08 AM
Quote
As someone whose business is entirely dependent on the weather, I contend that weathermen get paid six-figure salaries to pull random numbers out of one hat, and little pictures of clouds, sun, rain or snow out of another.
Hey that isn't fair, they do an excellent job of telling what the weather is right now and what it was yesterday.
Post by: Desertdog on December 31, 2006, 09:27:54 AM
Quote
Hey that isn't fair, they do an excellent job of telling what the weather is right now and what it was yesterday.
I guess being right 2 out of 3 choices isn't too bad. Actually some places they can be right most of the time. An example is here where I live. For most of the year you can predict it will be "clear and sunny."
Average of around 355 days of sun per year.
Summer it will be "clear, sunny and hot."
When they predict rain, they are usually wrong.
Post by: El Tejon on December 31, 2006, 10:02:48 AM
I for one pray for Global Warming, with New York and L.A. destroyed, I can have my freedom back! Freedom!
Post by: Monkeyleg on December 31, 2006, 01:46:31 PM
Obviously, location shoots are weather-dependent.
I got the number for the National Weather Service office in our area from my congressman (the guys at the NWS didn't like that very much
).Anyway, one of the guys admitted to me that they're lucky if they can accurately predict the weather eight hours in advance.
If weather was predictable, there wouldn't be much risk to the grains/cotton/OJ sectors of commodities trading.
Post by: cosine on December 31, 2006, 05:22:12 PM