Weather services nailed it this round.
This mornings USA Today, had a great article on how the computer models predicted the Blizzard that is now in progress on the East Coast of the USA. Doing so 5-7 days in advance.
Anyone spending any time watching these computer weather models (which yes, I do a lot) knows they don’t agree very often multiple days out.
The major global weather models agreed all week long that a major system would hammer the mid-Atlantic. Both the American Global Forecast System (GFS) and European Mid-Range forecast were predictive of what we are seeing in today’s storm.
GFS models showed for days that the snowfall would be heavy for the Washington D.C. area. Prompting government services to be watching closely the developing storm and allowing cities to plan ahead.
Weather models allowed for airport closures so that fliers would not be TRAPPED in terminals as well as allowed cities to prepare resources to assist in closures of roads, railway and subway services. Better resource planning allows for cities to save money when they accurately know that something is coming they can better prepare for removal as well as coast flooding.
Other often used weather models are the Canadian Model, the NAM (North American Mesoscale Model) and the UKMET (United Kingdom Met Office Model).
Predictive technology has gotten better and better over the years. In 2012 the European model predicting Hurricane Sandy, while they GFS disagreed. The debate regarding which is the best will continue, as these models improve coverage of the large scale events and provide better and better tools for the Humans that interpret these forecast for the local areas impacted by them. Watching the frontal boundaries of the winds/rain and snow bands.
As the storm begins to track up the Eastern Seaboard affecting multiple states, you can use some resources USA Today has provided click here. We do provide some of the same resources in our WeatherRoom you can find on the Navigation bar of our site as well, however most of our focus is on the South Western Region of the USA.
To read the USA Today Article click here.