Tag: Forecasting

Weather 101: What does “Fair” weather really mean?

April 17, 2018 / Ben Castellani

Even with thick high-level clouds overhead, yesterday saw “Fair” weather conditions reported across the Metro area, but what does this actually mean? As it turns out, “Fair” weather can signify a lot of things, with one critical caveat.

Why was this week’s snowstorm so easy to predict?

February 5, 2016 / Ben Castellani

Two weekends in a row, forecast models get to pat themselves on the back for accurately predicting major snowstorms more than seven days in advance. While this is a great showcase for the advancement of modern numerical weather prediction, it shouldn’t be considered a common occurrence. Model uncertainty, especially that far in advance, is still very large. After all, weather is the poster child for chaos theory!

As this week’s storm slid across the North Pacific Ocean on it’s way to Colorado, we were hesitant to inject any definitive snowfall amounts into our forecasts. Remarkably, looking back, if we had to issue a forecast a week ahead of time, it wouldn’t have looked all that different from our snowfall map the day before. We explain why this storm was a relatively easy forecast, and issue a few words of caution as we head through the second half of our winter season.