Hurry Up And Wait. A Maybe Storm Starts A Frenzy

Will we be getting a major snow storm this coming weekend? Maybe. We frankly don't really know yet. It's still 5 days away. But if you look at major news outlets, the blaring headlines are overshadowing the disclaimers.

This example in particular caught my eye from The Washington Post - "Confidence growing for major winter storm this weekend, but it's not a lock".

So it's basically saying, hey everyone! We could get a really big storm this weekend!

Or we might not.

Even worse are the amateur forecasters who have no actual training and, by extension, no responsibility to get it right. As I've talked about in these pages before, it drives me a little nuts when people vigorously defend the Facebook forecasters because they put out the most detailed forecasts first.

Do you know why they do that? Because they can. If they get it right they can brag about it until the next prediction. If they get it wrong, well, it's ok, they're not trained experts anyway.

Are we going to get a big storm this weekend? Maybe. Maybe not. Anyone who's telling you on five days ahead of time that we definitely are isn't a responsible meteorologist.