Meteorologists Are Very Accurate (Yes, Really)

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I've heard a version of this joke roughly 7,234,519 times in my life. The most common iteration is "must be nice to be wrong half the time and still get paid!". Ugh.  All I ask is that people be original when half-insulting me and my profession!The truth is, meteorologists...those on TV, in the private sector, at the National Weather Service, are really good.  Weather forecasts have never been more accurate. The lead time on tornado warnings is (on average) around 13-15 minutes. The accuracy of hurricane track forecasts is excellent.But of course, we aren't always right. And never will be. A lot of people have trouble with this. I get it. If your picnic/graduation/golf outing is ruined by weather, it's maddening. Especially if the forecast led you astray.

Let's pull back the curtain on our internal accuracy numbers

I take accuracy very seriously and it drives me crazy when a forecast is off. Especially if it's an impactful situation like a snow storm or severe weather.  If it's August and my forecast high was 81 and it ends up being 86 it irks me but that kind of "bust" doesn't really impact anyone significantly. That said, temperatures are the easiest thing to track so let me show you how we are doing so far this year. I keep very detailed records on our temperature accuracy dating back 5 years. The spreadsheet I use is pretty slick; I enter the forecast highs and lows as well as the actual observations and the spreadsheet produces easy-to-read accuracy numbers.Let's dig into a few of these numbers. So far in 2018, our high temperature forecast for the following day is within TWO degrees 70% of the time and within 3 degrees 84% of the time.Skip ahead to DAY 7: We get the temperature right within 2 degrees 38% of the time and within 5 degrees 64% of the time.  Not bad for 7 days out and I suspect these numbers would surprise some.

Meteorologists vs. Atheletes

Professional athletes are incredible and I would love to have even a shred of their talent. But here's what they aren't doing: predicting the future! Let's look at the "success" rate of athletes at the top of the major sports.

MLB

Mookie Betts of the Red Sox leads the majors in hitting right now with a batting average of .350. That's a very impressive number but means he is still failing to get a hit 65% of the time! If my forecast busted 65% of the time i would be in a world of hurt. Yet in baseball this is succeeding at very high level.

NBA

Clint Capela of the Rockets led the league in field goal percentage last season at about 65%. A great number but below our rate of getting the temperature right within 2 degrees (for the following day) of 70%. And again we are predicting the future!

NFL

Drew Brees led the NFL in completion percentage last year but still threw an incompletion 28% of the time. If I failed on snowfall forecasts at a rate of 28% I think I'd need to reconsider my career choices.

In Conclusion

The point of this post is not to brag. We're accurate but I'd like to be a LOT more accurate and I am always trying to get these numbers higher. Every "bust" is a learning opportunity. Meteorologists who don't learn from their mistakes don't typically have a long career in this profession.  This can be said of nearly every profession but it's especially true in a line of work that places a premium on accuracy. Sometimes I compare our job to referees/umpires. Most referees at the top of their profession get FAR more calls right than wrong. Yet their reputation is that they "are all blind" and what not. It's especially bad if they blow a very important call at the end of a very big game. A ref could have gotten every call right up until that point but it doesn't matter if he affected the outcome of the game by making a high-profile screw up. In our job, all these accuracy numbers are great and everything but in January if I say there will be 1-2" of snow and there ends up being 10" and people's days are severely impacted, it's very easy for the old "meteorologists are always wrong" cliches to come out. It's part of the reason I don't sleep much before big storms! That's ok...I love it. Couldn't imagine doing anything else!

Debunking The Myth Of Heat Lightning

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There are many, many weather myths...nuggets of "wisdom" that have been passed down from generation to generation. Many people hold on to these tightly; their dad or grandma or great aunt insisted these things were true! Believe me, I understand. My grandmother was largely responsible for getting me interested in weather and many of her weather-related anecdotes and pearls of wisdom, as it turns out, were not exactly filled with scientific rigor. And that's ok! Some weather myths are harmless fun and others (such as a few related to tornado safety) can actually be dangerous.At this time of the year, one of the most common weather myths that gets some play is "heat lightning". This is a term that many people associate with warm summer evenings in which you can see lightning in the distance but don't hear any associated thunder. Often the sky directly overhead is clear. The general idea behind heat lightning is that, well, it's really warm and sometimes that just makes lightning form. I guess?Well the truth is, lightning is lightning and it all forms by the same processes.  An electric charge is formed in a tall cloud by chunks of ice (some big, some tiny) bumping into and rubbing against each other.  When the charge grows large enough, a giant spark-lightning- occurs between positive and negative charges.  That discharge can occur within a cloud, from cloud-to-cloud or from the cloud and the ground.

WHERE'S THE THUNDER?

All lightning produces thunder, it's just that sometime we can't hear it. Lightning can be seen from as much as 100 miles away. But thunder can usually only be heard from a distance of about 10 miles away.The curvature of the earth plays a role. A distant thunderhead may be mainly below the horizon from your vantage point. But the lightning at the top of the storm may still be seen.Finally, don't forget: every time someone spells lightning "LIGHTENING", a meteorologist's blood pressure ticks upward.

Lots Of Summer Left But Shorter Days Becoming Noticeable

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The Valley just had 3 straight days with highs around 90 degrees and the pattern for much of August looks like a warmer-than-average one so there is still plenty of hot Summer weather ahead of us. That said, we are now over 6 weeks removed from the solstice (the longest day of the year) and the daily reduction of daylight is accelerating.  We are about to enter what I like to call "Solar" Autumn, or the 3 months of the year in which the days get "shorter" at the fastest rate.Since the "longest" day of the year, we have about an hour less daylight to enjoy as of August 6.For many, the change may be most noticeable in the evening hours and the earlier sunsets will really become apparent by the end of this month. Hard to believe that we are less than 3 months away from the start of Standard Time and 5:00-5:15 sunsets.Total daylight right now is still north of 14 hours but with a loss of 2 minutes and 30-40 seconds per day late in the Summer and early in Fall, the numbers really start falling fast.The sun is getting a bit lower in the sky and sunrises and sunsets are edging closer due due east/west as we head toward the equinox.  The yellow line is where the sun rises and the dark orange is sunset.

How Youngstown's Climate Is Changing In A Warming World

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Yes this post is about climate change. It's incredibly unfortunate that this subject has been made part science and part politics, but that's life in 2018. I'd like to discuss some short- and long-term trends for our area but first, let's get a few things out of the way.https://youtu.be/Z4bSxb5THm4

  1. It is scientific fact that the Earth is warming and this process seems to be accelerating.
  2. It is a widely held belief that human activity is at least partly responsible for the changes that have occurred in the last 100 years and especially the last 30 years. The PERCENT of climate change that rests at the feet of human activity? That's not something that scientists have a great deal of confidence in. But it's certainly not 100% or 0%.
  3. Climate change will benefit some populations across the planet. But for some, it's very bad news.

One way to think about the relationship between climate change and the impact on weather: the "steroid era" in baseball.

Remember back in the mid to late 90s when the home run numbers shot through the roof? Well as it turns out a lot of those guys were hopped up on high doses of steroids. Now, every time Sammy Sosa hit a home run was it because he was on steroids? NO! Some of those home runs would have occurred regardless. But the odds of Sosa hitting a home run in any given at bat were higher because of the steroids. In weather: is every intense hurricane, record-breaking winter storm or devastating wildfire to be blamed on climate change? No way. Many of these events would have occurred anyway. But the odds of extreme weather events is now higher thanks to the changed characteristics of the atmosphere above our heads.Climate Change

Changes in our local weather in recent years

How has the weather in the Youngstown area changed in recent years. In can be summarized like this: wetter and warmer.TEMPERATURE CHANGES: When we look at average temperatures in 30 year chunks, every single month has been warmer during the last 30 years than during the previous 30 years. The changes are, easily, most noticeable in the winter months. Warning Temps By Month.pngOn a shorter time scale, it's pretty amazing how daily record high temperatures have outpaced record lows over the last several years. This is just 11 years of data but I suspect looking at 20 or even 30 years would yield similar results. Record Highs and Lows PRECIPITATION CHANGESOur region sees more precipitation than it used to. Partly a natural cycle? Yeah probably. But partly because the planet is warming? Yeah probably. Warmer air can "hold" more water vapor. For each degree of warming, the air's capacity for water vapor goes up by about 7 percent. An atmosphere with more moisture can produce more frequent precipitation events and more frequent intense precipitation events. totalprecipThe 30-year average annual precipitation in Youngstown was 36.80" in 1988 and is now 40.17".MORE SNOW??It's counter-intuitive to think that climate change/global warming means MORE snow. But snow totals have been trending up in recent years. People think of the 70s as a super snowy decade but recent decades have been quite a bit snowier. Snow Each Decade YNG CAK PITWhen we look at the snowiest winters on record in Youngstown, just look at how many winters since 2000 are in the top 20:topsnowiestShould you be worried? I am not going to tell anyone how to feel. That's entirely up to you. Scientifically, the impacts of climate change are unlikely to be as threatening to lives and property in our region as in some parts of the planet. Regardless of what you think about climate change, we should all be good stewards of the earth. Will buying a hybrid or recycling more or eating fewer animal products make a dent in this global phenomenon? No. But making different choices can't hurt either.