re: Shepard Smith claims that the National Weather Service lied

1 & done!!

I'm seeing a gay black bear frolicking in the snow.

Thought he was fired!!

I saw a snippet about this issue this morning on the local news. The argument stemmed from a perceived slowdown in the local economy for one day as many businesses closed due to the threat of big snowfalls. My office, for example, took the day off....nobody wanted to commute, we all just worked from home.

It's a baseless argument. It's true, we didnt get the 1.5ft of snow, it was actually closer to 7" (TWSS). But still, with the winds, moving around outside was prohibitive. Trees did fall, power lines collapsed, even though it was milder than expected, it wasnt fit for moving around town doing "business"

Plus, outside the city (within commuter rail distance) they did get that much snow. Shep is a sensationalist idiot.

He is an idiot. Winter storms have an extreme gradient where one place gets a foot of snow and another place, just a few dozen miles to the south or southeast may get nothing but rain or a mix of frozen slush. This is exactly what happened in NYC. The storm tracked slightly further west which put NYC out of the biggest totals. It is very similar to hurricanes, any slight movement can greatly diminish the effects you have while another place down the road gets hit much harder than they thought.

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Shepard Smith, and other people who are being critical because there was less snow in some areas than predicted,

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fricking morons...some places got more than expected. From what I heard the system was 25 miles further out on the coast (or closer) which caused the system to dump less mear the coast...big fricking deal.

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Winter storms have an extreme gradient where one place gets a foot of snow and another place, just a few dozen miles to the south or southeast may get nothing but rain or a mix of frozen slush. This is exactly what happened in NYC. The storm tracked slightly further west which put NYC out of the biggest totals. It is very similar to hurricanes, any slight movement can greatly diminish the effects you have while another place down the road gets hit much harder than they thought.

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yeah.

if you look at the actual liquid water equivalent the forecasts were right on the mark. It was just the the character of the precip was slightly different from the forecast so the totals were different.

Besides, 6 inches of the sludge that fell is way worse than 6 inches of powder anyway. Not all snow is created equal.

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The NWS opted not to change the forecast, though they knew totals might be lower, because they feared changing them at the last minute would cause confusion for the public and people would let their guard down.

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Sounds like Shep is telling the truth.

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Climate change skeptics are a strange bunch.

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I can't speak for all the skeptics, but I will speak for myself. Geological history shows that the earth's climate has shifted from wet to dry and wet again, from heat to cold and back again, back and forth, for as long as there has been the earth.

So the premise that the climate may be changing is not something I take issue with. It likely is. In fact, if it was not changing at all, that would be the strange thing in my own mind. The weather changes, the climate changes, things that are not necessarily unrelated but not day to day.

Here's where I get skeptical. That widely spread notion that somehow climate change can be laid almost entirely at the feet of human beings and what we do. What I have seen is a near-doctrinal alarm being sounded for the rate of change to warmer temps, and against skeptics. To the alarmed, whatever changes seem too fast.

But I also note that the speed of warming does not match the speed at which some of the ice age descended on parts of the earth in past times. One case in point are the flash-frozen mammoths found in Siberia, still munching on whatever tropical vegetation they were eating at the moment the extreme cold hit them.

I just don't believe we really understand or even know all of the dynamics that are in play with our ever-dynamically changing climate and planet.

Anyway, that's just my two cents.

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Sounds like Shep is telling the truth.

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the question is why is this a story?

Isn't he the one who told live viewers in front of a hurricane that they were pretty much certain to die if they didn't evacuate?