Long Winter Ahead?

No, I am not talking about a “long winter” due to excessive cold/snow/ice, etc… but due to the extra work that will be required of us putting down bad information that is spread around on social media. It has already started, and it isn’t even November.

PARTIALLY OUR FAULT: Let me say up front that the problem is partially ours. The weather community, as you well know, missed the forecast on January 28, when a “dusting” turned into two inches, and “no major travel issues” turned into a traffic nightmare.

I don’t blame people for not trusting winter forecasts for a while; it will take time to earn that trust. Who cares what James Spann or the National Weather Service says? They were wrong last year, so rogue posts on Facebook are in fair play. I understand the temptation to share wild “worst case” winter forecasts. But, the point of this post is asking you NOT to do that for reasons I will explain.

YESTERDAY: I was about to leave for live weather on ABC 33/40 from Disney on Ice at the BJCC yesterday afternoon, when social media was lightning up about “James Spann forecasting a big snow for Alabama”. After some quick investigation, turns out this was floating around Facebook, and spreading like wildfire…

This, of course, was a forecast from a snow event we had back in February, and has absolutely nothing to do with current weather.

I honestly don’t know who started it; one person reported Facebook was pushing it into people’s newsfeed as a “related story” after a current post from me. Seems like folks just couldn’t resist the share button, and I spent considerable time setting the record straight.

AND… to make matters worse, another blog posted some rogue computer model run yesterday morning that suggested snow could fall over parts of Northeast Alabama as the weekend begins. This somehow came back later in the day to me as “James Spann is forecasting a snow storm this weekend in Alabama”.

Here is a piece from the Washington Post on this problem from 2013…

This is another topic for another day, to be discussed within the weather enterprise, but after the January 28 snow “bust”, you won’t see any outliers like that posted from me on social media. Generally speaking, when I show model data that seems like it won’t verify, it is on my daily Weather Xtreme video, which has been produced for over 10 years twice daily, and long time viewers understand that product goes deep into the weather forecast explanation and how to use the products I show. You can watch it anytime here, and it doesn’t take very long.

MY PLEA: Simply think before sharing extreme weather forecasts you see on social media. Many “click bait” forecasts are produced by people that have no weather training, and honestly could care less what happens. They just want the clicks, which they turn into revenue. Our team spends long, hard hours producing content for this blog; you can basically see our heart and soul here with the discussions and video products. If you see some extreme snow/ice forecast, I just ask you check the blog before sending it on to your friends.

Yep, we have been wrong before, and we will be wrong again. Our skill in handling winter weather events is not as high as severe weather forecasting, but you might be surprised at the winter weather accuracy. People will always remember the bad ones, however, which is just human nature.

Let’s all take a deep breath and get through the winter weather season with good, solid information. Think before you hit that “share button”…

Tags: winter forecasting

Category: Hodgepodge