We’re not taking a position on whether the NWS did the right or wrong thing in its weather forecasting for northeastern cities early this week. But we are sad to see its credibility damaged.
Among others, the Drudge Report, NY Post and even CBS News are running a story that suggests that the NWS “knowingly misled the public” in forecasting more snow than both actually happened and – more importantly – their models showed as likely as the storm got closer.
As CBS News reported: “But that day, some of the agency’s models were already changing. It appeared crippling amounts of snow could miss large cities like New York and Philadelphia. However, the weather service didn’t downgrade its forecasts until early Tuesday morning, when the storm was already underway.”
The attack on the NWS – and beyond – was swift. The NY Post declared that “meteorologists don’t trust the public to decide for itself” and Drudge tweeted: “”Overreaction by govts, bad forecasting…very troubling trend!!” And a news blog called the Gothamist wrote: “…the National Weather Service deliberately lied to you because they thought you were too stupid to deal with a slightly more reasonable forecast.” Drudge reportedly also used the occasion to slam “climate hysterics”. And even the Washington Post accused the weather service of making a bad judgment call.
Since we provide automated weather alerts to our emergency notification clients as part of our standard offering, it’s disheartening to see the NWS take a PR hit like this. From experience, we know that automated alerts can help people protect themselves from tornadoes flash floods and other imminent disasters and we’d hate to see someone fail to act because the credibility of the NWS was in questions.
