SCWXA and Accuweather: A Funny Story

As I stated in my first post, I am definitely a weather nut (if you will). To that end, I follow as many weather sources as I can. Usually, there is not much humor to be found with weather. However, I recently came across an interesting article about the big East Coast blizzard in the middle of last December.

If you remember, during this storm, many places across the Eastern Seaboard received at least 1 to 2 feet of snowfall. Overall, the storm was very well forecast with both the public weather entities (National Weather Service) and private weather entities (such as Accuweather) forecasting a significant event. Hindsight is obviously 20/20 especially with regard to weather. In hindsight, this event was very well forecast.

Now here is where the humor comes in. A few weeks ago, some weather enthusiast named Kevin Martin from the SCWXA posted a story on Examiner.com (for some reason, he is one of the weather examiners for Los Angeles). Anyways, in this article, Mr. Martin stated that Accuweather winter season forecast (especially the forecast for the Blizzard of 2009) was inaccurate. Mr. Martin stated that Accuweather greatly overforecast this event. In fact, according to this article, Mr. Martin stated most areas received less than 4 inches of snowfall. Based on snowfall reports from the National Weather Service, 1 to 2 feet of snowfall was the norm.

So in my mind, the humor from this situation comes from the outrageous article from Kevin Martin and the SCWXA. It is very humorous to see someone make such an unfounded and completely wrong statement when referring to a weather forecast. I think it really points to the lack of actual meteorological education that Mr. Martin has. In fact, he gleeful revels in this lack of formal education (making himself a self-made forecaster). In an effort to embarrass a professional meteorological organization (Accuweather), Kevin Martin has made himself look like an absolute fool. As you will likely discover in future blog entries, Kevin Martin and the SCWXA are far removed from being considered a professional meteorological organization.

Just one man's opinion.