Update: Nov. 26 at 9:10 a.m. ET: On Monday, Governor Cuomo apologized for his remarks about weather forecasters' performance regarding the Buffalo snowstorm. However, he again touted his planned state weather monitoring system, saying it would be more reliable than the National Weather Service. “To the extent any forecaster felt that they were criticized, that was not the intention,” Cuomo said during a press briefing, according to the New York Post.
New York Governor Andrew Cuomo responded to the massive lake-effect snow in the Buffalo area by criticizing the National Weather Service's (NWS) forecasts over the weekend, saying the agency failed to prepare the community for such a historic amount of snow. The problem for Cuomo is that the forecasts were accurate, and it appears that he was the one who was caught off guard, not the NWS.
"On the first phase of the storm, the snowfall, no one had an idea that it was going to be that much snow that fast," Cuomo said at a press conference on Saturday. Cuomo continued:
"Snow coming down at the rate of about five inches an hour. No one had any idea, the Weather Service was off, by the way, which is why I said in the State of the State last year, we're putting in our own weather detection system, because when the weather detection is wrong, it's not just an annoyance anymore because you're dressed improperly. When the weather detection system is off, you don't know a storm is coming, you didn't have a chance to prepare, and it can make a significant difference, and people can actually die."
We didn't have notice of the snow coming down the way it did, and the information was wrong.
Cuomo did, however, give the agency credit for providing the state with a heads up about flooding risks, which the Buffalo area is currently contending with.
There's just one major problem with the governor's comments, as everyone from NBC Today Show weatherman Al Roker to Salisbury, Maryland TV meteorologist Dan Satterfield have pointed out in coming to the NWS' defense.
The NWS had warned of a potentially "historic" lake-effect snow event days in advance, and as the event got closer, forecasters zeroed in on Buffalo's southern suburbs as the most likely target of the heaviest snowfall.
Forecasters at the NWS Buffalo office also repeatedly mentioned the likelihood of "thundersnow," with snowfall rates of at least five inches per hour.
For example, here's a forecast discussion that is a publicly accessible product used to inform other meteorologists of the rationale behind the NWS' more disseminated forecasts. It was issued on Nov. 16. Boxes have been added to emphasize the language pointing to the rare nature of the event that forecasters were expecting.
The NWS was also highlighting the potential for a historic event in other public forecast products as well, which flowed not only to the public but also the state agencies that Gov. Cuomo oversees. In light of these statements, one wonders from whom the governor's office was getting its information because it clearly wasn't the NWS.
@wxdam Great piece. Another artifact that was circulating earlier in case you missed it: pic.twitter.com/jLdq8Lr2IY
— Josh Timlin (@joshtimlin) November 23, 2014
Don Paul, chief meteorologist at WIVB-TV in Buffalo, took to Facebook to defend the NWS' performance.
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Others, like Al Roker, used Twitter to defend the NWS against Cuomo's criticism.
Seems like @NYGovCuomo folks didn't look at @NWSBUFFALO forecasts on Monday for 2'-3' of snow with significant additional amounts possible
— Al Roker (@alroker) November 23, 2014
Just FYI, here's the Monday fcst @NWSBUFFALO put out pic.twitter.com/LEVQgfg5xk
— Al Roker (@alroker) November 23, 2014
One hopes that @NYGovCuomo folks just forgot to tell him. Or maybe they were playing #cya but @NWSBUFFALO did their jobs
— Al Roker (@alroker) November 23, 2014
The Vane, which is Gawker's weather blog, went a step further and assailed Cuomo for using the Buffalo storm to push a pet project of his.
"Andrew Cuomo's attempt to trash the National Weather Service for this unusual lake effect snow event is nothing but a cheap and sleazy attempt on his part to garner public support for a weather forecasting system he wants to implement in his state," wrote Dennis Mersereau.
Mashable has contacted the governor's office to obtain more details on the state weather system Cuomo is proposing, but had not heard back as of noon eastern.
It appears Cuomo is referring to an effort to create a network of 125 surface weather stations across the state, known as a "mesonet" system. However, such a network would mainly for real-time observations of conditions, and be of limited use to advanced planning of severe weather events more than a few hours in ahead of time.
Cuomo is right that the NWS did not forecast up to 88 inches of snow, instead initially forecasting up to 3 feet, with more possible in some spots. However, pinpointing the location of the heaviest bands of snow can be difficult to impossible well in advance, because these firehoses of snow can be just 15 miles wide. This is too small for most computer models to accurately simulate. This requires forecasters to use a combination of local weather knowledge, computer simulations and other tools to guesstimate the likeliest locations for the heaviest snow.
Lake-effect snow events occur when blasts of frigid, Arctic air blows down the entire length of an open-water lake, setting up huge temperature contrasts between the relatively warm lake waters and the extremely cold air above it. On Nov. 18 and 19, the wind was blowing from the west-southwest across the entire expanse of Lake Erie. This long fetch allowed the air to gather a tremendous amount of moisture off the lake.
What happened during the Buffalo storm is that the narrow area of snow that formed, which was dropping more than five inches per hour of snow at times, stalled over the same communities for hours on end. This, plus a second round of lake-effect snowfall, led to a weeklong total as high as 88 inches, which is close to the annual average snowfall for this region. The stalling of the main snowband was extremely rare, lake-effect snow experts said.
“Lake-effect bands move so easily from just little waves in the atmosphere at higher altitudes that move through,” said David Kristovich, a professor at the University of Illinois, told Mashable. “This one was remarkably steady.”
Satterfield, the chief meteorologist at WBOC in Salisbury, Maryland, wrote on his science blog that Cuomo's remarks were a result of a lack of "critical thinking skills."
"This actually happens rather frequently after a big weather event, and forecasters are used to getting criticism, even when the forecast turned out very well. The main reason is almost always that the person complaining did not listen, or understand what was being forecasted. Yes, it is our responsibility to make the forecast understandable, even to someone with a 5th grade education, and perhaps even to a politician, but at some point you have to use some critical thinking skills."