ORLANDO, Fla. – There has been a tremendous amount of talk floating around social media about below-zero temperatures, a winter storm, arctic blasts, and, of course, SNOW!
But then you quickly tune in to your local meteorologist, or glance down at your weather app on the phone, and ... nothing.
Why is this? Who’s in the wrong here? The answer might be surprising, and it involves a little bit of uncertainty for all involved parties.
The latest computer models do suggest there’s the POTENTIAL for a new winter storm to develop in or near the Gulf of Mexico and over Texas, before surging toward the east, bringing with it high winds, heavy rain and wintry effects. As of Thursday morning, those same models are even more dispersed than they were days ago.
It’s as if we get closer in time, the models become more uncertain than they are confident. A lot has to do with the data they’re ingesting each time they “run” to then populate the newest data for us to scrutinize.
I also want to point out, your typical social media weather enthusiast (whom usually is NOT a trained or degreed meteorologist) tends to gravitate toward the worst possible scenario to then share with all of their followers. Drama and bad news sells, ya know!?
This is truly why we end up in such a conundrum with all types of bad weather out there across the globe. From winter storms, blizzards, tornado outbreaks and even hurricanes, social media can do a nasty job of garbling the information into a mere shadow of its former self. Then it’s up to you to carefully decide where it is you get your forecasts from.
So, we know “InstaForecaster343″ on your social media is CONFIDENT and HOLLERING about a big time winter storm that we’ve never seen before striking your neighborhood, taking out power, closing roadways, and putting you out of commission for the foreseeable future. But then you turn on your TV and see your favorite met at News 6 talking a much gentler story.
To top it off, your social media app tells you doom and gloom, your TV met says, “We’re watching,” and your phone says diddly squat for your town. It’s a bizarre game of weather telephone, if you will.
I’ll also add, the digital weather-sphere, as I call it, can be a beautiful but treacherous tool for raising weather awareness from a distance. Working both as a digital and broadcast meteorologist, I can testify to the vastly different funnel of info we have to present on both platforms.
Television is very carefully catered to local impacts, and how they could impact your day to day. We’re also incredibly confident in the weather forecasts we craft on air because they’re much closer in time and concrete predictions based on current conditions and high resolution model data.
On the digital scale, we have free reign to wander into the unknown a bit more, get buried into the science of meteorology, why the models are calling for a Category 5 two weekends from now or why one model suggests you’re buried in snow while another says light rain. It’s kind of like the weather matrix, we’re free to explore and break the bounds of dialing in a local forecast to get you safely through today and tomorrow.
Always prepare for some variance. The main reason being, they’re all great weather focal points for getting you from the start to the conclusion of your day, while also gearing you up for what the weather may look like five, 10 or 20 days ahead. It’s a matter of how you use them, and carefully understanding where the info is coming from.
Take an extra second and do your homework on a trusted and reliable weather source to follow, and keep them close, especially since there are far too many self-proclaimed “weather experts” who enjoy plastering the craziest model outcomes on the socials for your viewing pleasure -- and their revenue.
