Winter storm Juno...

[Baz]

LOL.....the media........never let a weather event go to waste!

[Alexm930]

Annnnnnddddddd PFFFFFTTTT!!!!

[86 ssinit]

For what it's worth we are getting hit on Long Island. We've got 1-2 feet and it is still snowing heavy.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

What bothers me (even moreso than TWC's inane naming of "nothing" storms just to add to the sensationalism of them - making them sound like hurricanes or named tropical storms a la National Weather Service's convention for such things) is the fact that so many entities DID respond to this one ahead of time. They took it seriously, called people up, had equipment where it should be, etc.

The problem is when the bean-counters find out what it all cost to put those assets in place and make all those preparations. They'll wring their hands and scream about how expensive the preparations were only to have been "wasted" on a storm that didn't really live up to expectations. They'll wail about it and as such the outcome is predictable - the response to the next one, the one after that and the one after that will diminish and until we get to a point where we set ourselves up for failure and get one that really IS a big deal and end up caught with our pants down, under-prepared and under-resourced. That's when people get hurt and when people die. All because of hand-wringing ninny bean-counters and the politicians that are stupid enough to employ and listen to them. No politician has the balls to stand up to someone accusing them of overspending in this day / age.

It's all so predictable. It'll happen.

I expect in a year or two when responses / preparations to events like this have been scaled back as a result of second-guessing / Monday morning quarterbacking from the misers is when it'll happen - a big storm will come in and there really will be rampant power outages and such. Hopefully I'll be long gone from this region of the country by then, but I feel for the folks that are going to get caught in this predictable cycle of budget-obsessed micromanagement and stupidity, chronic "knee-jerk" reactionary management and the incapability of leaders to actually lead and say "if it costs, it costs - lives are more important, better to over-prepare than under-prepare". I want to see efficiency and better spending management from government too, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it. We're setting ourselves up to do it exactly the wrong way. Utility companies will do the same thing - I can hear some power company middle manager now asking "why did we spend so much on tree-trimming and infrastructure last year only to not end up needing it? We had great service and minimal disruption. We spent hundreds of thousands of dollars calling up reserve crews that were never needed - we could have saved that money!"

You all know what's going to happen here.

[sugarwood]

^^^86 ssinit. That's not even close to a foot.. It's a few inches

[Macroni]

..... love the media testing local roads with 1" covering..... emmy winning performances of bravery

[Z-man]

Snowstorm Juno is not an Epic snowstorm. It is an Epic Fail for all the weather forecasters.

I wish I could be so wrong at my work, and still get paid so well....

[widgeon13]

My father (RIP) was a meteorologist in the US Air Force at a SAC base before he retired. A bad forecast was at best, a career ending move. If it was very bad it cost lives!

[sammyg2]

Originally Posted by Z-man

Snowstorm Juno is not an Epic snowstorm. It is an Epic Fail for all the weather forecasters.

I wish I could be so wrong at my work, and still get paid so well....

Did you just call the weatherman a sooper-pooper-head?

[Rot 911]

Must be a bunch of pussies up in the Northeast. We don't get much snow here where I live in Missouri. Going to be 52 today and 61 tomorrow. But every now and then we get some epic snow. Two years ago we got 21 inches of snow in one day. Everything was pretty much shut down for 3 days. We all spent that time helping each other dig out. Not even sure it made the national news. I would think up in the North East they would be used to this type of weather.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

What bothers me (even moreso than TWC's inane naming of "nothing" storms just to add to the sensationalism of them -

I think it's a good idea. If you don't like names I guess they could number them. But other than the date, they have no official way to distinguish between a storm that occurred in January 2015 and one that occurs in February. Giving it a name is a reasonable shorthand for, "That storm - you know the one. It was January I think. Or maybe February."

[Porsche-O-Phile]

That's precisely the history behind NWS's creation of named storms for major tropical systems - there was a case (believe it was in the 60s) where there were two major storms and people got confused as to which was which.

That's not why TWC is doing it. They're riding the coattails of NWS's standard to make every rinky-dink storm sound significant which only waters it down IMHO. It's like the boy who cried wolf. If we amp everyone up and stim-inject every single storm just to make it as sensational-sounding as possible (to sell more advertising) then sooner or later people just tune it out. That's the danger.

I don't pay much attention to the names anyway and I suspect most people also don't. I just look at the 5-day outlook and if it looks like there's nasty stuff coming I make plans to deal with it. I don't care much beyond that.

[red-beard]

Originally Posted by wdfifteen

I watched the news this morning. In the entire world last night only on thing happened. It snowed.
I don't mind covering something like this as a news story, but the media has gone completely off its rocker over weather.

Libya had a terror attack...

[TimT]

Western Long Island we pretty much spared.......hard to tell how much we actually got because its very windy and the snow is drifting...

This is interesting,

[dhrcr911s]

Gorgeous here in Montana, we will take the snow though..

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by Porsche-O-Phile

It's like the boy who cried wolf. If we amp everyone up and stim-inject every single storm just to make it as sensational-sounding as possible (to sell more advertising) then sooner or later people just tune it out. That's the danger.

Agreed. The hype is over the top in most situations.
In this case the storm was significant and newsworthy. I would rather be given a load of hype and make a decision about whether to ignore it or not than be surprised like we were in '78. Nobody around here was ready for that one. People died. I was on a search and rescue crew and found an old guy huddled in the only room of his rural house that wasn't packed with snow. His wood supply was about gone and he would have been dead in a few hours. A guy on another search and rescue crew broke his neck when the tried to drive his snow mobile over a buried fence and didn't make it. It's way better to over-prepare for nothing than to recover from a surprise. It's easy enough to turn the TV off and read a book if the hype bothers you (and yes, it does bother me.)

[CurtEgerer]

The live "NYC Snow Cam" from NBC News special breaking news "BLIZZARD 15!" coverage ...

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Ghost town here. Hard to say how much snow we got, it's been so windy, there are huge drifts everywhere. I think 18 inches at minimum. My little truck and the Open Country's did OK with RWD and a few cinder blocks in the back.

[ckelly78z]

Sorry, "Blizzard 15" looked pretty lame in the Live view. During the blizzard of 78 in NW Ohio, it was blowing so hard I couldn't see our Brown Chevy Impala that was parked 5' from our picture window for most of a day and a half. People would get lost walking to the barn to feed the animals or checking on neighbors.

[greglepore]

Storm track for Nor'easters are very difficult to predict, as they form and move quickly and track isn't predicatable-50-100mi east or west, two different events. Watching the radar last night was weird, these storms "band" and it was snowing heavily along the coast and in central Pa, and from Philly west to say Lancaster, pfft. Overhyped, yeah, but don't tell that to the folks in Boston, NH or Maine.