Wednesday, March 6, 2013

A Case for Better Weather Models



I am disappointed. Though I knew the weather on the East Coast would be different from what I was used to when I moved to Maryland, I hadn’t quite realized just how different it would be. I had expected fewer tornadoes, and maybe even fewer thunderstorms, but I wasn’t really prepared for such mildness in the winter. Having grown up in the Midwest, a winter with less than five inches of snow was really no winter at all. When my facebook and twitter feeds were flooded with information about snow in Boston, Kansas City, Lubbock, Long Island, and various other places across the country where I did not have the pleasure of being, I often responded with sentiments of a sad and/or jealous nature. Naturally, you might imagine my joy and hopeful anticipation when it was said earlier this week that the DC-Baltimore area would be blanketed on Wednesday, give or take a day, with a nice, thick, layer of snow.

Well, the weather gnomes had different ideas. As if to mock us for cancelling school, closing government offices, and advising people to hunker down and stay home whilst the skies unleashed their fury and hurled thousands, nay trillions!, of snow things down upon our weary heads, it became obvious by 1:00 PM EST that DC’s “Snowquester” might not even involve much snow at all. Sure, some areas west of the city saw copious amounts of Grade A snowman making, heart attack inducing snow, the DC-Baltimore area was dealt some early morning slush and surface temperatures that, wish as I might, refused to dip below freezing.

I’d had my doubts. The temperature yesterday topped out yesterday in the upper 40s, the temperature on Thursday was also forecast to be above 40F, and the rational part of my mind was saying “There’s no way that we’re going to get much of any snow with this...” A coworker of mine even left work on Tuesday doubting we’d get as much as 5 millimeters (because he’s French). The emotional part of my mind, however, was hoping against hope that somehow the cold would prevail and we’d get at least 5 or so inches (because I’m American) of snowfall to soften the harshness of such a mild, uneventful DC winter. My hopes were of course buoyed by forecasts from weather models, like the NAM, which was spitting out forecasts on Tuesday that suggested the DC-Baltimore area would receive a substantial amount of snowfall. 

These forecasts, as we now know, were actually pretty wrong as far as the DC area was concerned. They didn’t take into account the possibility of the surface temperature just not being cold enough for any appreciable snow. And the mistake was a costly one. A large portion of the DC-Baltimore area essentially shut down in preparation for this excessive accumulation of snow that didn’t end up accumulating. In doing a brief post-mortem of the event, The *gulp*Weather Channel mentioned that the model to perform the best for this Snowquester snowstorm in the DC area was, in fact, the ECMWF’s model, while American models lagged behind with varying degrees of wrong-ness. Granted, no model forecast is ever going to be 100% correct, 100% of the time (or even any percent of the time). It’s just not possible. In order to be useful, weather models have to approximate atmospheric processes, simply because atmospheric processes cannot be PRECISELY represented by equations, and because these processes are so complex and contain so many variables that it would be impossible to model them with absolute accuracy. And despite the snowfall forecast for the DC area being pretty much a complete bust, the models did do a decent job of telling us that there would be a storm and that some regions in Maryland, Virginia, and West Virginia would get a substantial amount of wintery precipitation. 

I can’t help but think of the irony of this storm. Just earlier this week, the nation’s Congress refused to put aside their frivolous differences and work (for once this decade) on some sort of compromise to avoid the major budget cuts outlined in The Sequestration, and now a poor forecast has hit the nation’s capitol and likely cost a substantial amount of money. What’s morbidly funny is the fact that these kinds of losses will only be avoided if the National Weather Service and our weather models can be improved, and if the weather data from satellites and terrestrial-based sources that we rely on to make our forecasts aren’t taken away from us. We busted. We busted because our short range, high resolution models need more development, and because the computing sources at the disposal of our National Weather Service probably aren’t currently good enough to even run better models. ECMWF arguably has the best weather model out there, and it’s arguably improving at a pace our operational forecasters don’t have the resources to match.

Americans: Isn’t it tragic that our weather, which is amongst the most volatile and diverse weather in the world, is better modeled by the Europeans than it is by any American-made model? Isn’t it tragic that we have the knowledge and talent in this country to vastly improve our National Weather Service’s forecast skill, but that we’re hard pressed to find an opportunity to do it?

Tuesday, October 30, 2012

And Then, It Was Morning...


The storm is done. At least here. Winds are light in my region, though they may still gust quite strongly for the remainder of today. It looks like the storm maxed out here at 8:00-9:00pm EDT yesterday, and Baltimore Washington International recorded gusts near 60mph at that time. So far, over 6” of rain fell here that can be attributed to Sandy. The flood danger is not yet over, as rivers and reservoirs will continue to rise as rainwater runoff flows into them. Over 185,000 customers in Eastern Maryland are without power, still several thousand more in DC and nearby areas, and Western Maryland is currently under quite a bit of snow. Areas on the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast Coasts? Well, we’ll be hearing about just how bad the damage there is over the next few days.

Experiencing a weather event of this magnitude is always strange for me. In some ways, I thrive on chaos. It forces my mind to focus on one thing, whereas I’d otherwise be thinking of 5 things at once. So, it’s very strange when the storm’s over, because often I start to think “That’s it? What do I do now?” At the same time, I know there are thousands upon thousands of other people within just a couple hundred miles of me wishing that they could think “That’s it?” after the storm has passed through. I also know that if the storm’s track had been just a little bit different; if the storm had traveled just a little bit further south, the damage here could have been devastating. While I can look out the window and see no noticeable damage across the street, I can also look around the windows, within my apartment, and see that the structure itself was stressed in the storm. Relatively substantial cracks in the drywall developed around the windows at the front of my apartment, presumably from the windows flexing in and out with the wind. Had the winds been much stronger than 30 or 40mph sustained with 50 to 60mph gusts, I do not know how long that wall would have held up.

A proper “After the Storm” post may come later. May…

Monday, October 29, 2012

THE SANDY SAGA- Part 6 (Pick Up Sticks)


~ ~ Monday, October 29, 2012 ~ ~

11:00pm - I am… tired. Have I really been doing this all day? It’s amazing how time flies when you’ve committed yourself to blogging hourly about your experiences in the mega freakish storm of death. Obligatory meteorological observations: at Dr. Gelaro’s, winds are at 24mph with 34mph gusts (at the airport, winds are reported at 33mph with 48mph gusts). Pressure is at 965.8mb and continues to fall. The latest advisory on Sandy, which will be the last issued by the NHC because Sandy is no longer a hurricane, has stated that Sandy’s central pressure is up to 952mb, and it’s (or her) forward motion has slowed to 18mph.

** SEMANTICS ALERT** Yes, Sandy is no longer a hurricane. BUT, Sandy’s sustained winds are still 75mph, which should make it a Category 1 hurricane, right? Well, actually no. I’ve spoken to some people today who have been confused by this. The general comment is “Well, Sandy is no longer a hurricane…” Honestly, that title doesn’t matter much when you’re dealing with a storm like this. A hurricane is a system with a center that is warmer than its surroundings.  It feeds off of heat. Sandy, however, has lost this characteristic. It’s now being called a post-tropical storm, and this has absolutely nothing to do with its intensity. It just means that Sandy’s fundamental dynamics have changed, and instead of being fueled by heat, it’s (or she’s) now being sustained by other mechanisms.

Crazy as it is, Sandy is now wreaking havoc hundreds of miles to the west of here! Power outages out in the Midwest are climbing, and parts of that region are seeing gusts comparable to what we’re experiencing here. Imagine that. But enough for tonight. Perhaps this saga will continue tomorrow…

THE SANDY SAGA- Part 5 (Maybe I Should Start Making These Titles Different)


~ ~ Monday, October 29, 2012 ~ ~

10:00pm – Still here. The winds recently have not been as bad, and the power hasn’t flickered for a while, but you never know. Latest obs down the street are winds at 19mph and gusts at 28mph. (It should be noted that winds a few miles down the road at the airport are reported as being higher… 33mph sustained with 49mph gusts.) It is still raining quite a bit, but it’s difficult to tell how hard from here because it’s still windy, and I can only see what’s illuminated by the lights throughout the neighborhood. Nearly 5” of rain have fallen here today. If I had to guess, I’d say that the most intense rain is probably over. But… wind could still be an issue. If Sandy hadn’t sped up just off of the coast though, I’m sure this storm would have been much worse. I think we will all be shocked by just how much damage this storm has caused in New York and New Jersey. Even here… thousands are without power as I type (at this time, there are nearly 200,000 customers without power in eastern Maryland, and there are several thousand more in DC and its neighboring cities. Keep in mind that one utility customer is generally 3 or 4 people). I have no idea what damage, if any, has occurred in my locality. My neighborhood has not gotten the brunt of this system, so I can’t see anything amiss as I look out my front windows. The neighbor’s wind chimes are still chiming. Still! Though I am presently sitting relatively at ease (it might be the Biscotti Effect), winds are forecast to remain high and possibly even increase as we go into the late evening/very early morning hours. I've got another storm day tomorrow.

What’s funny/interesting is the fact that I just went over and opened a shade, and now the wind seems louder. Like somehow blocking out the view of the outside made the storm stop in here. Which is a ridiculous notion, really… that’s impossible. But maybe because I couldn’t see the droplets falling on the window or the screen rippling, I didn’t think to pay attention as much to the sound of the wind. And the light starts to flicker again…

THE SANDY SAGA - Part 4 (Is This Getting Old Yet?)


~ ~ Monday, October 29, 2012 ~ ~

9:00pm – Winds: 24mph with 30mph gusts. The pressure is at 967mb, and still falling (for reference, 24 hours ago, the pressure here was around 1004mb). Thankfully, yours truly still has power (*knock on wood… again*), but power is out in many surrounding areas. Underground electrical wires… they can be a seriously awesome thing. I will, however, be surprised if my place manages to get through this thing without going dark. Sad part? The worst is apparently still to come. I have to hand it to you, southerners, this whole mammoth storm thing is tough! It’s not so much the howling wind and rain thing here right now, but more the prospect that my power could go out at any minute, so holyshnikiesIbetterhurryupandmakemymicrowavepopcornnow! It’s odd to think that not too horribly long ago, electricity was some fable… The prospect of being without a TV that could bring you cable broadcasts with the push of a button or without a computer through which you would instantly communicate with friends and colleagues did not scare people because these circumstances were completely normal. To me, however, the idea that I may very well be forced to go without the internet by factors outside of my control is absolutely frightening. What would I do at 9:15pm on a Monday night? Sleep? Strike up a conversation with my finger puppets? Read by frosting-scented candle-light? Bet you didn’t think this would start to become a philosophical discussion, did you?