Texas Winter 2014-2015

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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8321 Postby hriverajr » Fri Mar 06, 2015 9:09 am

wxman57 wrote:It's over! It's finally over! Winter is over! :12: :onfire:


You want to do the "Bones" thing?
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8322 Postby Portastorm » Fri Mar 06, 2015 9:57 am

utweather wrote:
Longhornmaniac8 wrote:As much as I hate another bust, I think EWX ultimately did the right thing by issuing the WSW, and I was pleased to see that the school districts were proactive with their shutterings.

We were a degree or two away from a pretty considerable event here, and I think it's entirely unrealistic to expect a forecast office to be able to pinpoint an event this dynamic with that resolution. In this case, I'd much rather places err on the side of caution with protecting people.

As has been said by others, I don't envy those folks; they've been made to look like fools repeatedly this winter (and last winter, too, a couple of times), but we all know how nuanced these forecast packages are. They've tried over and over again to tightrope the forecast, understandably, and have somehow been burned every time.

For their sake, can't we just have a clear-cut winter event just once?


Epic fail on the school closings. Wait til morning or at the very least ice accumulation the night before. Good grief! Someone from the dfw give these guys some advice. This is either 2 years in a row or twice in the last 3 jumping the gun. Growing up in Dallas you had to wait til morning. Here the odds are even much much higher of nothing frozen. I woke up to sunshine and dry ground this morning. It was very nice day to do some yard work and stuff around the house, nice little chill but felt good. But no school, lol

Edit: I believe they cancelled the schools down before 6pm, yes that is correct 6pm. When it was cloudy and temps in the 40's maybe if that


I would agree with your comments to some extent. Yes, the ideal mode of operation for ISDs should be to wait until 3-4 am to make the call. I'm not certain in this case why they all pulled the trigger the night before except for the fact that nearly every piece of guidance which forecasters use strongly showed a significant amount of ice and some sleet for Austin. The ISDs participate in a number of conference calls with officials within their district as well as NWS and/or private sector meteorologists. I know several private sector guys who thought our storm was "a lock." And those are guys who get paid by clients to forecast so if they're not very good, they don't stay in business long. So that's probably why everyone made the call the night before.

There's a lot that goes into these decisions and folks might be surprised at the level of complexity involved. A call for a school day really has to be made by 4 a.m. in order for bus drivers and school personnel to get the word and act accordingly. That's why there usually is a conference call at 3 a.m. with all the parties involved. And this time, they were only going on what weather professionals were telling them.

Perhaps they will learn from this episode. Hopefully they will because as someone peripherally involved in these decisions, I get tired of all the Monday Morning Quarterbacking. And you all know how I have, in the past, called certain actions (or inactions) by NWS in question. In this case I feel like they did the best they could with the tools they had. In fact, I even sent an email to the lead warning forecaster at EWX ... an email of support because it's easy for everyone to be a critic until you walk in their shoes.
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8323 Postby weatherdude1108 » Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:33 am

Portastorm wrote:
utweather wrote:
Longhornmaniac8 wrote:As much as I hate another bust, I think EWX ultimately did the right thing by issuing the WSW, and I was pleased to see that the school districts were proactive with their shutterings.

We were a degree or two away from a pretty considerable event here, and I think it's entirely unrealistic to expect a forecast office to be able to pinpoint an event this dynamic with that resolution. In this case, I'd much rather places err on the side of caution with protecting people.

As has been said by others, I don't envy those folks; they've been made to look like fools repeatedly this winter (and last winter, too, a couple of times), but we all know how nuanced these forecast packages are. They've tried over and over again to tightrope the forecast, understandably, and have somehow been burned every time.

For their sake, can't we just have a clear-cut winter event just once?


Epic fail on the school closings. Wait til morning or at the very least ice accumulation the night before. Good grief! Someone from the dfw give these guys some advice. This is either 2 years in a row or twice in the last 3 jumping the gun. Growing up in Dallas you had to wait til morning. Here the odds are even much much higher of nothing frozen. I woke up to sunshine and dry ground this morning. It was very nice day to do some yard work and stuff around the house, nice little chill but felt good. But no school, lol

Edit: I believe they cancelled the schools down before 6pm, yes that is correct 6pm. When it was cloudy and temps in the 40's maybe if that


I would agree with your comments to some extent. Yes, the ideal mode of operation for ISDs should be to wait until 3-4 am to make the call. I'm not certain in this case why they all pulled the trigger the night before except for the fact that nearly every piece of guidance which forecasters use strongly showed a significant amount of ice and some sleet for Austin. The ISDs participate in a number of conference calls with officials within their district as well as NWS and/or private sector meteorologists. I know several private sector guys who thought our storm was "a lock." And those are guys who get paid by clients to forecast so if they're not very good, they don't stay in business long. So that's probably why everyone made the call the night before.

There's a lot that goes into these decisions and folks might be surprised at the level of complexity involved. A call for a school day really has to be made by 4 a.m. in order for bus drivers and school personnel to get the word and act accordingly. That's why there usually is a conference call at 3 a.m. with all the parties involved. And this time, they were only going on what weather professionals were telling them.

Perhaps they will learn from this episode. Hopefully they will because as someone peripherally involved in these decisions, I get tired of all the Monday Morning Quarterbacking. And you all know how I have, in the past, called certain actions (or inactions) by NWS in question. In this case I feel like they did the best they could with the tools they had. In fact, I even sent an email to the lead warning forecaster at EWX ... an email of support because it's easy for everyone to be a critic until you walk in their shoes.


:uarrow:
Well said (written :wink: ) Portastorm! I could not agree more. They did the best they could with the data they had at the time. The weather service forecasters do get criticized a lot, given all of the general complexities and "butterfly effects" of weather patterns in general; not to mention the behind-the-scenes logistics I can only imagine are involved with something like this, along with any other potential weather threat. It's the typical "damned if you do, damned if you don't" thing. I would not want their jobs. It is much safer to make a forecast on this forum than on the radio or news. :wink:
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8324 Postby wxman57 » Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:57 am

Image
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8325 Postby Tireman4 » Fri Mar 06, 2015 10:59 am

wxman57 wrote:http://home.comcast.net/~cgh57/itsdeadjimwinter2.jpg



Humm....are you sure you want to make this call, this early....hummmm
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8326 Postby Tejas89 » Fri Mar 06, 2015 11:10 am

Took a walk through the woods yesterday morning. Magical... sunlight glistening off 4" of fresh powder. I felt guilty leaving the first tracks.




But now it's time for SPRING! Bring it. :sun:
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8327 Postby MGC » Fri Mar 06, 2015 8:55 pm

Sadly, it will remain winter until the sun crosses the equator on 20 March at 22:45Z, so two more weeks of old man winter......MGC
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8328 Postby fendie » Sat Mar 07, 2015 10:01 am

Last of the snow is melting today in North Dallas with sunshine abundant and the temp rapidly climbing into the 50s. Long range GFS lost most of the cold air next weekend and the EURO never had much below normal temps.

Image
Image
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#8329 Postby gboudx » Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:03 am

:uarrow: looks like garlic and green onions. Nice.
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#8330 Postby Ntxw » Sat Mar 07, 2015 12:12 pm

Don't sleep on phase 7 of MJO and EPO. I don't care what the models say currently, I wouldn't risk starting plants until April this year.
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8331 Postby aggiecutter » Sat Mar 07, 2015 1:00 pm

One last shot of winter from the Portastorm Weather Center:

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Re:

#8332 Postby somethingfunny » Sat Mar 07, 2015 2:25 pm

Ntxw wrote:Don't sleep on phase 7 of MJO and EPO. I don't care what the models say currently, I wouldn't risk starting plants until April this year.


There might be a light freeze or two toward the end of March but I think there's a fairly strong chance that last night was our last freeze of the season.
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Re: Texas Winter 2014-2015

#8333 Postby Ptarmigan » Sat Mar 07, 2015 3:11 pm

wxman57 wrote:It's over! It's finally over! Winter is over! :12: :onfire:


Freezes happen in April. Besides winter will be back before you know it. :grrr: :lol:
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#8334 Postby Texas Snowman » Sat Mar 07, 2015 11:18 pm

Over huh? Where have I heard that before? :D

Like Ntxw said above, I wouldn't count on winter's chill being completely done in Texas until the end of this month or early next month. If memory serves correct, we had an official freeze here last year on April 15.

And tonight, I read some interesting things (somewhere else) that suggests that there could be some more winter in the works around the spring equinox. I guess we'll see.
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#8335 Postby Ntxw » Sun Mar 08, 2015 12:34 am

Take a read

http://www.wsi.com/blog/energy/pull-out ... -use-them/

I would not bet against the -EPO. Will we get snow again? I don't know climo says more likely not. But if you believe we've seen the last of winter, well we'll see.
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#8336 Postby gboudx » Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:07 am

Thanks for the info Ntwx. Looks like I'll wait before planting my garden.
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Re:

#8337 Postby Ntxw » Sun Mar 08, 2015 9:32 am

gboudx wrote:Thanks for the info Ntwx. Looks like I'll wait before planting my garden.


Potting may be a good temporary thing then just transplant come first week of April. I think this year is going to be a great planting year since the atmospheric pattern looks very nino like. Less watering for us, soil is a little cool though.

Late March and early April freezes occur most frequently when El Nino is strengthening in the springtime. The top 5 latest freezes are dominated by this enso state. Currently Enso is strengthening and we are seeing a recyling of the pattern, ridge moving into NW Canada, east coast cold that eventually retrogrades by end of the month.
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#8338 Postby Rgv20 » Mon Mar 09, 2015 9:06 am

Its raining pretty heavily this morning :D Almost half an inch and still a lot more looking at the radar.
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#8339 Postby TheProfessor » Mon Mar 09, 2015 10:41 am

I went to Ohio a few days ago, and on one day the high was 13 degrees. :cold: I think I got so used to the cold there that now 45 degrees here feels like 70 degrees. 8-)
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#8340 Postby TeamPlayersBlue » Mon Mar 09, 2015 11:26 am

You guys brag about your snow, we brag about our continuous rain events. More to come peeps.
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