April! April! Where for Art Thou?

I used to be addicted. I waited for hours for my next fix. As I checked the time for next update, I would yawn. Finally at 10:20 PM, the weather forecast would begin.

Our local forecasters have been waaaay off all winter. Every time they predicted The Big One, the sun would shine. One afternoon while looking forward to a walk outside in 60 degree weather, a blustery snowstorm dumped five inches of snow.

William Callahan from the Boulder Daily Camera Newspaper wrote about the storms of March being incorrectly predicted and correlated them to Goldilocks and the Three Bears. At the end of his article he said, “Furthermore, April (like March) is projected to be a dry month. Will the forecasters end up with porridge on their faces?”

Yep… Looks to me like porridge alright.

I have been making fun of the recent blunders on Twitter. Schools were closed in anticipation of last week’s storm that was to bring over a foot of snow to the area. We got a few inches. It got retweeted by our local newspaper.

I slept soundly through last night’s forecast.

When I woke up to yet another snowstorm today, I wondered if the schools had been closed again or if school superintendents view meteorologists like the boy who cried, “Wolf!” It has been snowing all day and the inches are piling up.

William B. Gail is the co-founder and CTO of Global Weather Corporation and is also 2013 President-Elect of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). According to him, all US forecasters base their predictions on the same model which is not as accurate as Europe’s or Japan’s. Our poor standing has to do with the lack of satellites and investment in new technology.

Well that explains everything. We should take up a collection!

This snowstorm is named Yogi and Zeus is the last. It occurred to me that The Weather Channel will soon run out of winter storm names. Are they scrambling to come up with new ones? At this rate, we will have snow until June!

Spring snowstorms are typical for this region. Usually, we get a storm and I smile knowing it will melt in the spring sunshine the next day, but our temperatures have been in the basement. The trees must know something is up since none have leafed out.

I welcome the moisture and remember snow dancing not long ago, but most of the ski resorts closed last weekend. Dang!

The next time you hear about the new Super Dooper Doppler 50,000, look outside your window. April doesn’t look sunny and dry to me or Roxy.

Is it really April?