Week 15
Welcome to my weather snowfall contest I’ve dubbed “Weather Model Madness”.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time, you know how much I’ve railed against sharing raw weather model snowfall maps well into the future. Anyone with an internet connection can share weather model output showing snow maps 1 week, 2 weeks, or even LONGER into the future. As I’m sure you’ve seen, some of these maps are really EXTREME & usually come with phrases like “BIG SNOWSTORM COMING IN TWO WEEKS” or “NOT A FORECAST BUT WOW!!!! LOOK AT WHAT THE ______ MODEL IS SHOWING”.
Weather model snowfall maps far into the future are often very inaccurate. They will make a flurry look like a blizzard a week or more away. Of course, the opposite can also be true… but the scary maps are what gets shared for likes and clicks.
I’ve long said that we “shovel” a lot more modeled snow than actual snow. This snow season, I’m going to try and prove it.
Here’s how this will work.
Every Sunday – I will use the 00z model runs of the GFS, EURO, Canadian, and ICON weather models. 00z is currently the 7PM run time of those models. Once we “spring forward”, it becomes the 8PM model run time. This refers to when the models start crunching numbers, not when the data becomes available. That takes several hours to happen. The 00z model suite is what most morning meteorologists, like myself, look at first when analyzing model data early in the morning. Of course – I don’t start with model data when making a forecast. I start with current conditions 
.
I will look at a time period of 00z Sunday to the following 00z Sunday. This actually equates to 7/8PM Saturday to the following 7/8PM Saturday. The bottom line though is it’s a one week snowfall forecast total.
In the event there’s an issue with that particular model run… sometimes the super computers crash or there’s some other kind of outage, I will use the previous 12z model run for that model.
You’ll notice that the Canadian model map looks different. That’s because it comes from a different source. For whatever reason, the “State Level” zoom for the Canadian model doesn’t exist on Pivotal Weather. To try and keep the zoom levels consistent for you, I’m pulling the Canadian numbers from Weather Bell. The maps look different, but the snowfall numbers are the same.
I will be using both the 10:1 (raw) maps as well as the Kuchera maps.
10:1 (raw) maps use a strict 10″ of snow to 1″ of liquid equivalent for every single storm.
Kuchera maps attempt to create a more accurate snow to liquid ratio. This is done by taking the warmest temperature in the lowest ~18,000 feet of atmosphere and making a snow to liquid ratio based off of that.
Obviously, there’s a lot of areas on the map, but not every single area has a reliable snowfall measurement. For the purpose of this case study, I will be comparing the numbers specifically with what’s measured at KAVP (Wilkes-Barre/Scranton Airport). That measurement is reliably taken because KAVP is an official National Weather Service climate site.
As a heads up, I already know I’ll be out of town in a couple weeks on Sunday. I’ll save the maps from the model runs and have the Weather Model Madness post when I’m back.
Also – to be clear, when I share these maps, I will simply be sharing them objectively. I won’t be weighing in on what I think of them.
Hope you enjoy following along for a snow season of WEATHER MODEL MADNESS!
Last week models showed 0.3″ to 2.9″ of model snowfall potential. 1.0″ of snow was measured.
This week – models show 0.6″ to 1.3″ of model snowfall potential.
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