How Can A Snow Forecast Be This Wrong?!

When I was leaving work last night we were all bracing for 'the biggest snowfall of the year.' It was cold and windy and most forecasts were calling for anywhere from four to 14 inches of snow to fall in Northern Colorado.

When I came in to work, this is exactly how much snow had accumulated on the station parking lot: zero. How can predicting snow be so hard?!

I joke that Colorado forecasters often have just as good of luck predicting our weather with a blindfold and a dartboard as they do with their fancy computer models. But it's not because of incompetence on the part of our meteorologists, it just boils down tot he fact that weather, especially snowfall is really hard to predict.

A Washington Post blog talks about snow being so hard to predict for three reasons; The non linear nature of weather, uncertain initial conditions, and approximations of some physical processes. The gist of this article is, "It's a pain to accurately predict snow."

A different article from the American Geophysical Union states these five factors that cause problems with snow forecasting; The type and thickness of precipitation, surface temperature, ground temperature, dendritic growth, snow to rain ratio. The main point of this article is, "It's a pain to accurately predict snow."

This article from Helium discusses the problems that arise from having to use probability and computer modeling when predicting snow. The overall point of that one is, again, "It's a pain to accurately predict snow."

Are you seeing the pattern here?

I feel bad for our meteorologists, if they underestimate snow people get all bent out of shape because, They weren't expecting that much snow."If they overestimate snowfall people get all bent out of shape because they got ready for a storm that never happened. When they do get it right, the general public doesn't care because, "It's their job."

I feel bad because when a weather forecaster makes an error or misses a prediction, a lot of people get to see it.

From ABC News:

Snow forecasting is arguably the most difficult, most complicated thing for forecasters to predict.