How meteorologists botched the blizzard of 2015

Update after update, the Euro (produced by the European Center for Medium Range Weather Forecasting) kept predicting very high snow totals in New York. As of Monday morning’s run, the Euro was still projecting a foot and a half in the city. This consistency was too great for forecasters to ignore, especially because the Euro had been the first to jump on events such as the blizzard of 1996 and Hurricane Sandy. It also was one of the first to predict that a March 2001 storm was going to, like this one, be a bust. The Euro had a good track record.

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That consistency, though, hid a great sense of uncertainty. The SREF (or Short-Range Ensemble Forecast), produced by the National Weather Service, collects 21 models (shown below). And Sunday night, the SREF indicated that the storm could be very different. Five of the 21 models in the SREF had (on a 10:1 snow-to-liquid ratio) less than 10 inches of snow falling. Nine of the 21 predicted a foot or less. Only eight could have been said to support 18 or more inches of snow in New York City.

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