November 13, 2009
Weather or not
by Tony Chamberlain/
I never kept count over my 30 years as ski writer for The Boston Globe of just how many angry calls I got from ski areas whose managers wanted to vent about getting whacked yet again by a bad weather forecast.
The usual complaint was that a weekday forecast had hyped some cataclysmic storm that never materialized, keeping weekend skiers and boarders away in droves. Most people begin planning their weekend around midweek, and with TV weather “teams” trying to out-hype each other by scaring the heck out of their audiences, the decision to stay home was made long before said phantom storm fizzled.
Weather people I have talked to over the years argue that they follow the most reliable computer modeling available. If a major storm is indicated, then it’s irresponsible, they argue, not to report what possibly could result.
The fact that two, not 20, inches fell, and that the northern highways remained perfectly passable is not nearly as dire a consequence as getting hit by a “sneak” storm that causes damage and threatens safety. So goes the weather broadcasters’ argument, neatly sidestepping the real question: Could forecasting simply be done more accurately in the first place?
Now, against this backdrop, what about long-range weather forecasting? If you can’t tell me what’s happening this Friday, how can you talk about the week of Feb. 5, when we are planning a ski vacation with friends?
So, every year at the Globe, some time around the kickoff of the winter sports season, I would do a kind of set piece on what the long-range prognosticators were saying about the coming season. These ranged from the length of tail fur on squirrels to the fuzziness of woolly bear caterpillars to that avuncular oddity of periodicals, The Old Farmer’s Almanac.
I would start the annual piece with Herb Stevens, the “Skiing Weatherman,” who syndicates a weather/skiing/golf show out of Rhode Island, talk to Joe D’Aleo at Intellicast, a few other New England forecasters, but always come back to the quirky Old Farmer’s Almanac, which touts itself on the masthead to be “useful, with a degree of humor.”
OFA, which says it has an 80 percent accuracy rate in its weather forecast, claims to base its work on modern technology, and yet readers are told:
“We derive our weather forecasts from a secret formula that was devised by the founder of this Almanac, Robert B. Thomas, in 1792.”
Then, after a lengthy review of the various scientific and statistical elements in the OFA forecasts, the following disclaimer arises: “We believe that nothing in the universe happens haphazardly, that there is cause-and-effect pattern to all phenomena. However, although neither we not any other forecasters have as yet gained sufficient insight into the mysteries of the universe to predict the weather with total accuracy, our results are almost always very close to our traditional claim of eighty percent.”
So, on that assuring note, I thumb through this year’s OFA to the long-range weather predictions to see how my Feb. 5 trip to Vermont looks. Hmm, not too good.
“From Feb. 1 through 6th we should expect “periods of rain and snow. Mild, followed by sunny weather 7-10th.”
So that pretty much dooms our Super Bowl ski outing. In fact, none of my plans brewing for this winter seem to fall within OFA’s general summary, which predicts:
“Winter will be cooler than normal, on average, primarily due to persistent cold temperatures in January, with only brief thaws. Other cold periods will occur in mid-December and mid-February.”
Now if this sounds pretty much like a prediction that anyone who has lived in the Northeast for maybe three years might come up with, we come down to a most important sentence: “Precipitation and snowfall will be below normal. Watch for a snowstorm around Thanksgiving with other snowy periods in mid- and late December and mid- and late January.”
So it sounds as if, like last season, the snow may come early and hang in through the Christmas holidays. And for the all-important Presidents Day weekend right in the middle of February?
“Snow, then sunny, very cold,” leading into the vacation week, then “14-17 Snow showers, cold. 18-21 Rain and snow, then sunny and cold.”
Whoops, just as the weather looked promising, the old freeze-thaw cycle makes an appearance around the middle of the week.
As for the crowning denouement of every ski season, spring skiing, we should expect another good one, following two good years in the Northeast. According to OFA, “some rain around the 17-21 of March that will revert to snow, and the month ends with snowy, sunny and cold weather.”
While snow is mentioned for early April, I suppose when the weather turns to “sunny and seasonal” by mid-month, we are talking about that period of firm snow in the morning, corning up by mid-day.
But if you just can’t feel comfortable until you check out the woolly bear caterpillar seasonal prediction, OFA has you covered there as well. Citing the 1948 work of Dr. C.H.Curran, curator of insects at the Museum of Natural History in New York, Almanac writers suggest the woolly bear probably tells us more about the previous winter than the one ahead.
Any trend in the number of bristles of one color or another probably indicates more about how late or early the spring came but makes no connection to the future.
“Most scientists discount the folklore of woolly bear predictions,” says OFA, quoting a Washington scientist. “I’ve never taken the notion very seriously. You’d have to look at an awful lot of caterpillars in one place over a great many years in order to say there’s something to it.”
