We too got sent home early today at 2. And it's a good thing too as I just barely made it out with the garage starting to flood

quote:

---

The OP is really driving his weather schtick into the ground.

---

No worries, dude. Diggity's on it!
Good luck. Looks ominous. *****t!
Hate this crap.

quote:

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

quote:

---

Flatout -- no hype. I talked to one of our meteorologists directly -- probably our best forecaster. He says the worst stuff will happen late this afternoon and tonight. There could be severe flooding. The reason we haven't seen a lot yet is the fact the storm stalled and that was not anticipated. Because it stalled, it will draw up more moisture from the Gulf. The big question is where the massive rain band is going. It could be west of Houston in Columbus, or it could be pulled up into Houston. We are already seeing high water in low-lying areas. This has potential to be a dangerous situation. But, that is the key word, "potential." It's always a delicate balance for the news media when it comes to properly informing people when it comes to the danger and overhyping it. The truth is, forecasting is not an exact science.

---

Hmm. Forecasting is like exploration geology. There's typically about a 20 to 30% chance they are right. Biggest difference is there's no penalty if a meteorologist is wrong

---

I was getting a tour of the Ch. 13 studio and got to chat with one of the meteorologists who told me, "It's amazing how little science actually goes into this."

---

For Broadcast meteorology sure, for the NWS/NOAA? No. The reality is that broadcast meteorologists don't have to do ****, they can get everything from the NWS or one of the major forcasting companies. There is zero science to it and anyone with a background in meteorology could do that job. It still amazes me that they hire actual meteorologist for that role rather than someone who just looks good like all of the Spanish channels.

---

It's a selling point for one station up here, they say they are the only station with all degrees meteorologists on staff as opposed to one affiliate who has a wildly popular cute girl with a broadcast meteorology degree from Mizzou. But **** up here in OKC gets wild with weather so that actually matters to folks.

quote:

---

Flatout -- no hype. I talked to one of our meteorologists directly -- probably our best forecaster. He says the worst stuff will happen late this afternoon and tonight. There could be severe flooding. The reason we haven't seen a lot yet is the fact the storm stalled and that was not anticipated. Because it stalled, it will draw up more moisture from the Gulf. The big question is where the massive rain band is going. It could be west of Houston in Columbus, or it could be pulled up into Houston. We are already seeing high water in low-lying areas. This has potential to be a dangerous situation. But, that is the key word, "potential." It's always a delicate balance for the news media when it comes to properly informing people when it comes to the danger and overhyping it. The truth is, forecasting is not an exact science.

---

So it didn't happen this afternoon and has yet to happen tonight.

There's one more nasty band offshore of Corpus that looks like the last shot at this thing being anything serious. Based on what it looks like it actually could swing far east of us between here and LA.

I have a meteorology degree from A&M, broadcast meteorology is a complete joke. All of the actual science is done by NOAA and the equivalent Euro agency. All of those models are done on supercomputers and receive constant automatic updates of the current conditions in the area.

It's an absolute waste of a hard science degree to go into broadcast. Why in the hell would you put yourself through such a difficult degree plan to do something where you will never use it?

I am not *****ing about them getting anything wrong because I understand how ridiculously complex the models are and how the oceanic/atmospheric system is subject to chaos theory and non-linear dynamics. That is, it's impossible to predict with 100% accuracy unless you could literally model all of the atoms on Earth. We are improving them all of the time, but they still aren't remotely close to perfect.

Nothing is happening. ..

Are you saying it's not possible to enjoy the science and broadcast part of the job? From what I can tell the degreed meteorologists here in OKC on TV aren't just regurgitating 100% of the time.

quote:

---

Sure, they take a lot of products produced from 'scientists' and collect them, decipher them and then make predictions based on that so morons can understand it, but a nice ass and a pair of tits ain't gonna get it done. You guys realize that all of that data has to be parsed, much of which requires an actual science to do...yes? Please tell me you guys aren't that stupid.

---

Since they get data from a supercomputer spitting out models, I guess it doesn't really matter who is in front of the camera. With equal chances of being right/wrong, I'll take the nice T&A to look at all day.

I understand they can't be 100% right, I just wish they would just be more truthful about the fact that their predictions aren't much more than an educated guess. Rather than fear-mongering, just state this is what it looks like, there are a few things that could happen given the perfect mix of elements, plan for the worst and hope for the best. But since so many mouth breathers have no sense of personal responsibility this isn't feasible, just wishful thinking.

If that's what you want don't watch the news weather.

Get your weather from Eric Berger, a forecasting service, or even the NHC itself.

Oh I do, I keep nhc.noaa.gov and spc.noaa.gov open as well as various blogs. When your daily schedule depends on the weather you have to seek out reliable sources more so than the day to day commuter.

I don't think the hype was really that bad.

What I think can be confusing for people who don't know local geography is when the news people send cameras out in all directions to find a puddle in Seabrook or a strong breeze in High Island.

In contrast, they never gave us a shot of Braes Bayou and said, "Everything is fine here so far."

quote:

---

If Bill and the Memorial Day floods would have been reversed, no one would have given two craps about Bill. Houston has just had bad luck with storms coming after high profile events (Rita after Katrina; Bill after Memorial Day).

---

Winner winner.

So what if all the wx guys said "this has potential for serious life threatening flooding, but it's just a potential and our best guess is we don't know how much it's going to rain so it'll probably be fine"


And then it dumped 18" of rain? Which way would you rather this get played? I prepare either way and don't require the TV to tell me what to do but a lot of folks don't.

Just food for thought.....I'm bummed it hasn't rained more, just like evey one else.

Winds are picking up

I think this last band that is offshore has a real potential to nail Houston.

quote:

---

I think this last band that is offshore has a real potential to nail Houston.

---

thanks, channel 2 weather man

The commute should be fun tomorrow

quote:

---

Yep.
Too early to laugh off.

---

how bout now?

Some of you guys act like in order to be actually doing real meteorology these guys need to be generating all of their own models and predictions from scratch and doing all of the things they learned in school. As an engineer, I can say i have done zero differential equations since graduating and one integral. the bulk of my job is taking models that someone else built and deciding if i think it is correct or not for my particular scenarios. sure sometimes i do a bit more leg work than others, but it is never from scratch and very rarely using the methods I learned in school. School was more about the foundational knowledge so that I know when to believe the model and when not to. as a meteorologist could you simply pull the forecasts generated by noaa, arrange your graphics and parrot them on TV with your only qualifications being that you look good in a mini skirt? sure. are there some that put in a lot of time and effort going through the models and trying to figure out what it is going to do locally in order to deliver the best forecast they can? yes.

also, if you want to blame someone for the hype, blame it on the networks and producers. watching the forecasts, most that I saw were pretty realistic and on par with a normal morning forecast, with little flair or drama, but it seems a lot worse when you see it all day because the producer and network decide to air the weather 24/7 because it is what will get them the viewers and ratings, and therefore advertising money.

shhhhh you'll upset the pitchforkers.

quote:

---

Some of you guys act like in order to be actually doing real meteorology these guys need to be generating all of their own models and predictions from scratch and doing all of the things they learned in school. As an engineer, I can say i have done zero differential equations since graduating and one integral. the bulk of my job is taking models that someone else built and deciding if i think it is correct or not for my particular scenarios. sure sometimes i do a bit more leg work than others, but it is never from scratch and very rarely using the methods I learned in school. School was more about the foundational knowledge so that I know when to believe the model and when not to. as a meteorologist could you simply pull the forecasts generated by noaa, arrange your graphics and parrot them on TV with your only qualifications being that you look good in a mini skirt? sure. are there some that put in a lot of time and effort going through the models and trying to figure out what it is going to do locally in order to deliver the best forecast they can? yes.

also, if you want to blame someone for the hype, blame it on the networks and producers. watching the forecasts, most that I saw were pretty realistic and on par with a normal morning forecast, with little flair or drama, but it seems a lot worse when you see it all day because the producer and network decide to air the weather 24/7 because it is what will get them the viewers and ratings, and therefore advertising money.

---

I completely understand this as I'm an engineer as well (got a masters in environmental engineering), but as an engineer everything you analyze is a unique event that no one else is doing anything with. That is, no one else is designing or drawing a conclusion based upon that particular set of data. To put it another way, you are the only person who is determining how something is going to be designed or works.

For broadcast meteorologists, there are hundreds of other people, who have access to far better tools than you, that have already done the analysis. Broadcast meteorologists do not have access to the modeling programs run on supercomputers. No prediction that they will ever make will be as good as anything put out by the NWS (they may be better some of the time, but it has nothing to do with them having more accurate predictions, rather it is because of the chaotic nature of the atmosphere and they essentially just got lucky).

So no, I don't have much respect for any broadcast meteorologist. This is why I avoid local news entirely and go straight to NOAA, the NWS, Jeff Masters at Wunderground for Tropical Weather, etc.

Chita Johnson told us this was nothing.

quote:

---

Chita Johnson told us this was nothing.

---

That's not what she told me.

quote:

---

LOL. Here is the future cast for Wednesday morning commute.

---

Couple of hours late, but looks like those bands are pushing through. Received 1.5" in the last hour just outside of Katy. Though we had a lot of radar over us yesterday that looked like that, which produced very little rain.

quote:

---

Unless there's training I'm not expecting these storms to cause widespread, significant flooding in Houston, but they definitely could cause some temporary problems on low-lying roadways.
Bottom line, we'll have to watch how the remaining moisture from Tropical Depression Bill's tail continues to stream into the upper Texas coast today from the Gulf of Mexico.

---

How is 59 so bad at draining? It was barely raining but there seemed to be about 1/2" of water over the whole road and everyone had to drive ~45mph. trbl

#coolstorybro