A cup of coffee, about to delve into Mom's apple pie, figured I'd check up on the potential storm. Fully expected to see a forecast for a couple of inches at the lake, a couple of feet on the outer cape. Fully surprised to see the words, "Blizzard Watch" greet me when I logged into my own web page!
Now's a good time for us all to observe the personality differences in forecasters (as well as prepare for the storm if we need to.) Skip wrote what's best about Rose, and TnT mentioned what should be expected of a meteorologist. I'd like to point out to all, that meteorologists are humans with their own personalities, likes & dislikes, habits, flaws, winning points, and personal struggles. Each modern-day weather forecast is a mixture of two things:
1) A number of computers that look at the present state of the atmosphere and calculate the probabilities of where it will go from here --different scenarios--based on the known past. It's more complicated than that, but for the layperson, that's the basic idea.
2) Human meteorologists who've studied enough math to have a pretty good idea how those computers think, and who've studied enough weather to know how it moves and changes so that when any given computer is being a [expletive] again, they know well enough to disregard the computer.
Each forecaster's life experience and personality plays a role in what he/she ultimately decides. Two forecasters predicting the same storm may have two different levels of excitement. You might have one guy who spent 10 years flying Air Force missions in Alaska who simply doesn't get excited about winter weather anymore. He'll predict 2 feet of snow but he'll be ho-hum about it. His collegue might be a woman from southern California who never saw snow until she went to college at Mississippi State and witnessed a 3-inch snowfall close everything down. She'll predict the 2-foot snowfall with a great deal more excitement than the former USAF guy.
Times like this, when a potential blizzard knocks at the door, are when we can start to see forecaster personalities come out. It's like when I first became an EMT, and noticed that my co-workers had certain personalities that always showed in true emergencies. After a while you get to know them -- this guy gets easily excited, that guy gets calmer as the situation gets worse, etc. Same for the weather forecasters. Look for their personalities in the technical discussions they write.
I once had the opportunity to shadow two NWS mets for a college paper. After hanging out with them for a whole shift I was much better at reading their forecasts. One of them was a spastic/athletic personality who had a tendency to put a lot of big words and exclamation marks in his forecast discussions any time a storm was coming. I can't explain how meeting him helped me forever-after know what he was predicting, but that whole "put a face to the name" concept worked. I could read through one of his storm forecasts with a general sense of what was actual information and what was just "him being him."
NWS meteorologists usually sign their last names or initials at the end of whatever they write. Services like AccuWeather usually have a by-line on each article, like a newspaper would.
As we now have a blizzard threatening New York City and parts of New England during a period of increased traveling, we can expect forecaster personalities to play a bigger role in what they say. Take note of it for future reference. When another big storm threatens, remember this one and take mental notes again.
As for my early opinions on this storm, regarding the lake...
Wind with this storm is expected to be from the northeast. That's not a good direction for snow at the NW end of the lake. It all hits the Ossipees, and everything downwind of those pesky mountains gets "shadowed." The stronger the wind, the longer the shadow. Moultonborough center (Old Country Store) is open to the northeast, barely. They're in a wind funnel between the Ossipees and the Sandwich Range. The wind could pick up speed going through there. A 40 mph wind from the NE can become a much stronger wind right along the Rt. 25 corridor from Moultonborough Airport all the way to Moulton Farm.
For snowfall, however, Moultonborough Neck would be in the "shadow" of the Ossipees, as would Center Harbor and perhaps Meredith Bay area. Those locations would get lower snow totals.
Higher snow totals would happen on northeast-facing slopes. Sandwich is one of those places. Ossipee is another. So are Gilford and West Alton.
What I've predicted is all based on a snowstorm with strong wind from the northeast -- that's a great scenario for Gunstock. And right in the middle of Christmas vacation week, too.
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