From CFACT

By Joe Bastardi

I want to show a storm that no one knows about, just like this past storm, if it were 150 miles to the east would not have been much

The Feb 8, 1968, storm was the first time I ever heard my dad say, ” Think of all those snowflakes falling uselessly over the ocean.”

Provisional Heavy snow warnings. (what they called it in that day) were up a day in advance, and for good reason.

Here is the weather map:

SFC

Notice how close this is to the recent blizzard this past Sunday morning

500 mb

The call in 68 was that the storm would explode NNE, but instead it was more NE

The next morning

It went on to deepen to under 968 mb with hurricane winds offshore and an eye-like feature. As I understand it, it was the first non-tropical storm that the satellite caught with an eye!

The blizzard was about 100 miles further northwest

and instead of the energy remaining separate, it was bundled into a storm

which the 68 storm did about 6 hours later, but too late

But a bit further west, 68 would have been a blizzard

But the latest storm, a bit further east, would have had my late father talking about the wasted flakes over the ocean ( Actually, there were because there was a lot of snow over the water.  If the blizzard were 100 miles further west, it truly would have been a top 5 overall since its heavy amounts would be even more extensive, but as I showed in the last blog, there are plenty of storms, and I could not show them all, that had aspects as impressive as this.

Bomb o Genesis has always occurred. Not all of them are close enough so people remember, I remember the ones that miss as well as the ones hit. Which is a huge problem when trying to carry on a rational discussion with people obsessed with whatever missive it is they are pushing

After reviewing my first post on three part series, I think we showed how we set this storm up with the analogs, so I am not going to review that.

What I am going to say is that the analog method whipped the AI’S. I did an AI case study, and they waffled all over the place, and all were too far east most of the time. The three under examination were the Google Graphcast, the European AI, and the US AI

The US AI did best among AI’s . The other 2 were mainly a coastal sideswipe. In fact, I believe the reason that until Friday, you were hearing a lot of different things is because of the married to the models problem I think we have in the field had forecasters following them. The Analog pattern issues one forecast until the day before the storm. So from Monday, the forecast was 6-12 locally 18, a DC to Boston special.  So everyone who believed that knew a big storm was coming. You bring the models in at the end and adjust the forecast the day before with model input.   So one change to the forecast, not flipping with every model run. You USE THE MODELS, YOU DON’T LET THE MODELS USE YOU.

But there was one model that nailed this.  The USA GFS.  I have never trusted the GFS. But something different was going on with it. When the rain came into LAX 3 days before the GFS started showing something I had not seen it do before. It held on to that focused energy and did not hand it off to the jet stream to the north. This was very out of character. The European and AI were all doing that.  The analog method and the GFS agreed.  So there I am, my only ally, being the lowest skill score model.

But this is a great triumph for the GFS. HUGE. If I were NOAA, I would be pushing this victory all over the place.  Right down to the final amounts, it continually whipped every model.   It occurred on the day of the 1980 Miracle on Ice, and of course, our victory over Canada.  And as one of my friends in the field said, this was the GFS miracle on ice.   If not that, the 69 Mets.

But here is the problem, and I pointed it out in a previous post. NOAA’s research on weather and the improvement was collateral damage in the Phony Climate War. The Obsession with Climate was clearly seen in 2020-2024 with NOAA press releases on climate and associating weather events with climate change. Combine that with NASA and, of course, the lawyers getting in with such things as climate justice or lawsuits meant to shut people up, overshadowed all the great things NOAA is really about. Apparently, upgrading the GFS in such a way that it blew out all other models

I advocated for using a surgeon’s tool, not a blunt hammer with cuts.   The most qualified person to objectively look at NOAA weather research is me, because I use it all the time and appreciate it so much and I am the most experienced private sector global forecaster daily.  Every single far. But I fear my ideas would not go over very well with people seeking to impress their superiors with cuts. But the source region is the phony climate war, because it hid all the great stuff, so when the climate bomb blew up, there was collateral damage. And that’s a shame. We should treat the weather as a war.  A matter of national defense. Not with silly projections about climate, but improving the ability for a nation to minimize damage by weather events that impact far more people now than they did 50 years ago, for instance, to as small an extent as possible.  The lack of respect for the weather and what it can do runs rampant today when people express shock and awe at events that have happened, should happen, will happen again as nature is apt to do, test limits and even set new ones..

But overall, the message here is NOAA has been up to great things. You just don’t know about them. I live on lots of their sites, not for the answers but to raise the questions I need to answer.  And there is so much talent in NOAA. The discussions of some of the forecasters, whether I agree with them or not, show a love that is the common thread of a weather geek.

I believe the only field that is AI-proof is the weather.  All the other fields where AI can take over are man-made fields so to speak.  But the weather re-creates itself in a new way every day. Each event has a chance to be bigger than a similar one before. It is an eternal and infinite system, and forecasters should not outsource their love and skill to the models; they should be the masters of the model.  And if there is anything this storm proved, it’s that this is the case

All one needs to do is go look at NOAA weather maps and reanalysis through the years, and you would understand that. If you stare at models, you won’t . But in the end, the one model that measured up to the challenge of this storm was the USA GFS. And there are many storms on those sites I live on and love that point to it happening

So all together now

USA! GFS! USA! GFS! USA! GFS!

It’s our Meteorological Miracle on Ice.