genning allophones: Quote of the Week ? blaming Nature for poor model performance ...

Saturday, March 9, 2013

Quote of the Week ? blaming Nature for poor model performance ...

qotw_cropped

There?s not much I can say about this quote from the Washington Post?s Joel Achenbach as it stands on its own quite well.

The context of this quote is article on the bust of a forecast that was to be ?snowquester?. You can cut the disappointment in the air with a steak knife. Achenbach muses:

Still, I blame the storm more than I blame the computer models. The models are pretty good. It?s Nature that messed this up.

I hope he escapes from his alternate reality soon, people must be looking for him.

Full story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/achenblog/wp/2013/03/07/forecasts-and-probabilities/

h/t to Willis E.

UPDATE: Some people think he was being sarcastic or humorous. For example, from this part:

?I thought the forecast for Snowquester was pretty good, as total busts and epic fiascos go.? is clear as day, but I?ll translate for you:? The forecasters gave it a good shot, but it wasn?t good enough.? It was a total bust.

But there is also this:

The models in this case predicted serious snow in the I-95 corridor, but the storm ?underperformed,? and didn?t drop snow intensely enough and consistently enough to cool down the warm layer of the atmosphere and the warm ground in the urban areas.

The storm ?underperformed?.

I read the entire essay, but I didn?t get the sense that he was joking. I considered the possibility he might be before I wrote this post. The clincher for me was this update:

Update 2: I?m told via Twitter that my chaos line is incorrect. Gavin Schmidt (@ClimateOfGavin) writes: ?Chaos in weather systems is technically deterministic ? it happens even without introducing random elements.?

If this was a humor piece, somehow I don?t think he?s be worrying about details like that.

YMMV ? Anthony