Reply to High Winds and Possible Tornados Monday March 16th Afternoon-Evening

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]its over, you town criers are real pieces of work with your 40+ posts since yesterday.[/quote]

+1. It rained hard for a little bit. That’s all. Now no one will listen next time.[/quote]

It was fear mongering for clicks! And I fell for it.

Bad weather sells, so they lie and exaggerate for the clicks. [/quote]

They have successfully predicted 13 of the last 4 storms we have had.

Click bait hypemasters.

I look forward to tomorrow’s rationalization for why they botched it so bad. Put together your own bingo card: tricky, challenging, fuel, best we could, appropriate caveats…[/quote]

Meteorology is a very challenging discipline, and the reality is that a generation ago we would just have taken the weather as it came, with very little warning expected. These days, people expect accurate predictions, and the science just isn't there yet. That's just how it is, PP. You can rant and rave all you want, but meteorologists make the best predictions based on the most up-to-date models they have, and governments and schools use those to make decisions far in advance of actual events - they have to - which increases the probability of errors.

You're welcome to take courses in meteorology and do a better job if you think you're so much smarter than everyone else.

[/quote]

Your statement contradicts itself:  if the science “just isn’t there yet,” it’s not rational to use it for decision making in the manner that it seems to be.  Emergency preparedness has costs, and the large number of false positives shows that our decision makers are fundamentally miscalibrated. Whatever the model outputs are, there needs to be more skepticism:  hmm, tornadoes in D.C. in March? That doesn’t seem real likely.  But that would involve an actual human exercising actual judgment for which that person could in theory be held accountable if they were wrong. Can’t have that. So, let’s just go with whatever the model spits out, and we will rule out of bounds any question such as: “we’ve now got a well established history of models over predicting severe weather events in a part of the world that is not particularly known for them; maybe we need to be a little bit more cautious about disruptive interventions next time.”   It’s one thing when you are dealing with snow where the risks are much more asymmetric, where if you get it wrong people are driving in dangerous conditions or trapped in cold conditions. 60-degrees-and-potentially-windy-with-a-modeled-risk-of-a-tornado…..somewhere; better cancel school? Hmm, that’s pathological risk aversion it seems to me.  I actually don’t even blame the decision makers anymore, they seem trapped in a structure of perverse incentives more than anything else. [/quote]

Allll of this. The value add of local meteorologists is that they are supposed to not just narrate whatever the model spits out, but understand the history of this area and apply that specialized knowledge. Their forecasts are literally responsible for millions of dollars in lost productivity and revenue when institutions close, never mind the inconvenience and expense of actually preparing.

Given all that, when was the last time a meteorologist was fired for getting a multimillion dollar forecast wrong? If the answer is “Never” what does that tell you? If the longer answer is meteorologists are only fired for being boring and failing to farm engagement, then you are much closer to understanding the actual incentives of the weather forecasting market than any model that relies on notions of accuracy or accountability.[/quote]

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