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Object #4: Notebook for Reflection and Pinocchio 

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Object #4: Notebook for Reflection and Pinocchio 

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After the storm passed, Isaac failed to be candid with himself, his team, and the general public. Rather than owning up to his poor forecast, he went around saying that his lead time saved lives. This can't be any further from the truth! He didn't realize the storm was coming into a couple of hours ahead! Maybe he saved one or two lives by running around the town alerting people, but just image how many lives would have been saved if his forecast was accurate. He reminds me of Pinocchio because this is a big lie not only to himself, but as well as the victims, who I'm sure didn't want to hear anything from him at that point! Part of me thinks that he is in denial and feels extremely guilty for the damage caused and wonders if he could have helped avoided it. Obviously a more accurate forecast would have prevented the loss of as many lives, and he is most certainly feels guilty. But being in denial about it and telling a huge lie not only to the public, making yourself look hubris, but also telling a lie to yourself is just gratuitous. This brings me to the second part of object #4, a notebook for reflection. When meteorologists make a mistake in a storm, we analog it to save as a memory so we don't make the same mistake in future storms. We use it as a learning experience. It is just plain silly to not learn about it and lie to yourself for this reason as history will only repeat itself. In the end, it will be an everlasting cycle that you can't break due to you never learning from the forecast mistakes. I can think of two personal examples of this. Both of these connections come from the same storm, January 25-26, 2015. I was in 7th grade at the time. I was of course doing the weather and with a snowstorm coming, I was doing the morning announcements to brief the school and make my prediction about school for tomorrow. It seemed like quite an easy one for me. The timing was perfect, 3 A.M. through 5 P.M. and around 9 inches of snow. It sounded like a no brainer. Even someone who didn't follow meteorology could probably predict this one correctly. "The probably of a snow day tomorrow is 100%, we will not have school tomorrow," I said to everyone. The remainder of the day was spent by me receiving high fives from everyone saying we can't wait for the snowstorm. A big theme of the day was how no one was going to do their homework due the next day as I pretty much told the entire school that we would be closed tomorrow. Since I'm a stickler to doing my homework, I did it anyway in case something went wrong with my forecast, and also so I could spend my day off sledding , sleeping, and drink hot coco. 11 P.M. that night, I was looking at the new data and I realized I made a big mistake. The National Weather Service also realized they made the same mistake too. We were immediately downgraded from a warning to an advisory, and I knew things weren't looking too good for me. The following day, Niskayuna awoke around an inch of snow! The storm made a shift to the east! Boston got hit hard! Obviously we had school and it was not a good day for me to say the least. I was blamed for no one completing their homework and was made a fool in front of the entire school. Thankfully, this didn't ruin my reputation as I owned up to my mistake and said I will look into what went wrong. People in the end were supportive and this kind of made me more popular. In the end, this has lead to me creating a text alert system so that if there are ever 11 P.M. shifts again, I can accurately take back an inaccurate call. All of this goes to show you that in the end, people understand it's a very tricky science and will have your back. In Isaac's case, people were furious that he lied about the mistake and wanted nothing to do with him. My second example form the same storm is how a director of the National Weather Service sent out an apology tweet! Yes, you read that correctly! He too was faced with support and understanding. If Isaac was honest about the storm, another storm like this would have a higher probability of being accurately predicted and the public would likely support him.

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My third object is a human gut to demonstrate the idea of following your "gut", or going with your gut feeling. This is a crucial part of the forecast process and something Isaac did not do when making his forecast about the Great Storm of 1900. It is crucial because us meteorologists are looking at many models to make our forecast. But sometimes, these models aren't 100% correct, or even close to correct. Sometimes it may be a compromise, demonstrated in object #2. But when all is said and done, the most important part in any forecast in my opinion is following your gut feeling. as this is usually correct. Isaac kept on discussing how he was very concerned about his forecast of a complete miss, but in the end he trusted the science, which wasn't too extraordinary in 1900 to say the least. In the end, when he saw the surface observations coming in, he realized how inaccurate his forecast will end up being. He had very little time to run around warning people. Outside research completed by me says that Isaac ran around the Galveston to tell people, rather than telegramming it since he was so frantic about the incoming disaster and his poor forecast with provided no time for probation for the people. But, you wonder if all of this could have been avoided? Not only for the teamwork discussed in object 1, but if Isaac trusted his gut a bit more, could he have caught onto the trends sooner and/or not have been adamant about a complete miss. If he followed his gut, maybe his forecast would have stated that there was significant uncertainty, but still advised people that this could be serious and taking the recommend precautions. It was unreasonable for him to completely disregard his gut for this reason. While we have significantly improved data today, in fact incomparable data to back then, it is still important to follow your gut. A personal example to back up this point was about 10 months ago in January 2018. I knew there was going to be a storm, all models had it and there was no doubt about that. What was very unclear to all of us was how much snow would accumulate as the models were in poor agreement. A blend of the models suggest a decent snowfall of 4-7," and the National Weather Service was in agreement with this. However, I thought the models were overestimating how long it was going to take for the temperature to drop for snow. I was confident in higher amounts of 8-10." Thus, using a combination of the models and my "gut", I forecasted 6 to 9". We ended up with about 7.8 inches from this storm, proof that using your gut AND the models is the best way to go about these storms. It is also proof that you can NEVER disregard your gut.

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Object #2: Two Weather Models (Ancient and Current)

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Object #2: Two Weather Models (Ancient and Current)

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My second object consists of two weather models. The first is a surface observation model right before the Great Storm of 1900 made landfall in Galveston, Texas. The second is a current weather model that the National Weather Service and I often use when making our forecasts currently, the Global Forecast System (GFS). In a way, if you leave out the part of them refusing to coordinate with Cuban Meteorologists (see object 1), Isaac's Weather Bureau did they best they could with the models they had at the time. The only piece of information the model on the left showed was surface observations at the time. These allowed meteorologists about an hour or two of lead time to warn the public of the storm, since it was impossible to get surface data of the future. Thus, it can be said that Isaac and his team with the little resources they had did they best they possibly could when predicting the track of this storm. However, this is again only the case if you do not include the part of them not coordinating with Cuban Meteorologists. For the second part of the object, a weather model that we currently use, the GFS, it goes 384 hours out, 16 days, in advance. Not only does the model give us likely surface conditions, but temperature, precipitation type/rate, etc. It is amazing to think about how advanced the science of meteorology has become. I wonder how Isaac's team would have done today with forecasting the storm. As for a personal connection, let's discuss a recent storm. Like Isaac and his team, I was pondering with the issue of what to do with an approaching storm. Models had the storm for a long time, but disagreed on the exact track Two model groups set up. The first group consisted of the of North American Model, Global Forecast System, and Canadian System. The other camp consisted of the European Model, and Global Ensemble Models. The first camp of models was much farther north with the storm track than the second camp. This was an important detail to sort out for two reasons. The first was that the storm was likely to consist of a tight precipitation gradient, cutoff. Thus, any shift in the storm track, even as little as 20 miles, could mean big changes in the placement of the heaviest precipitin. Obviously, the more northerly the storm track is, the farther north the precipitation would be, closer to Niskayuna. Now with uncertainties regarding storm track, there is was uncertainty with the precipitation type; rain vs snow. This was the second reason. The second camp would imply an all snow solution, though with such a far south storm track, it wouldn't even reach Albany. However, the other camp was farther north, and thus warmer. This solution implied a rain/snow mix for the Hudson Valley and a moderate snowfall as far north as the Capital Region. I was able to make an accurate forecast of 2 to 4 inches of snow for Niskayuna using a blend of the models. This personal connection serves two purposes. The first is to demonstrate how advanced the science has become. It just fascinates me how an accurate prediction can be made this far in advance. The second purpose of my connection was to relate back to the first object in a sense to demonstrate teamwork. In this case, the teamwork was between the weather models. The models teamed up in a sense and compromised with the solution. Some models had 1 to 2", others had closer to 6", and some were spot on. A great combination of the models, lead to an accurate forecast. Models worked together to nail the forecast.

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The background image is the devastating amount of damage in Galveston, Texas from the Great Hurricane of 1900. This Hurricane was one of the deadliest in history, with 8000-12000 total deaths. But could this massive amount of devastation and loss of life have been avoided? The answer to this question is most likely yes. The beginning of this wonderful book starts off with the lead forecaster of the Galveston, Texas branch of the Weather Bureau, Isaac Cline, receiving word about the current conditions in Cuba associated with the Hurricane. After analyzing previous storms as well as the satellite data, he was convinced that this storm would make a turn to the northeast towards Florida and spare the Gulf of any rain and wind impacts. However, the expert forecasters of Cuba, who had a lot of experiences forecasting cyclones, we confident that this storm would head towards the northwest towards the Gulf; the complete opposite of Isaac's forecast.  Isaac quickly dismissed their concerns and lead himself and his staff to believe that the storm would completely miss Texas. Furthermore, the entire Weather Bureau had Isaac's back. After extensive coordination with the headquarters via telegrams, everyone was in excellent agreement that this storm would miss Texas. Obviously, it turns out the Cuban Forecasters were 100% correct. With no warning what-so-ever, property was destroyed since people had no idea a storm was coming and could protect it accordingly. Furthermore, there was a significant loss of life. Thus, there is this theme of lack of teamwork between different forecast groups can lead to significant failure. If the U.S. forecasters discussed with the Cuban forecasters, rather than completely dismissing their beliefs, this could have likely be avoided as a compromise in the forecast would have been met. Compromise means that maybe the U.S. forecasters would understand the Cuban's point of view and issue the proper warnings for the storm. The image demonstrates this theme by showing the devastation, and loss of human life. Again, some of this could have been avoided by teamwork as well as the proper warnings allowing people to take cover and study their houses.