WLOS weather-guessers miss again

4 Comments

1. 

   marc January 19, 2007

   My main frame of reference for this situation are the times over the past few years when all the weather geeks have been screaming about the end-of-the-world snow or ice storm that’s coming, nobody believes them because they never get it right, nothing’s happening at 6am so all the schools open, then all freezing Hades breaks loose at 8:30, and the buses hit the icy roads to try to get the little kiddies home, and we all get stuck watching Sheraldo stand in the dark at 6:00 where one of those buses slid off the road. Of course, those instances are rare, but I would rather the school official-types err on the side of safety than make what later turns out to be a foolish call just because they’re afraid of taking a few complaints if the bad weather didn’t actually materialize.

   Now, I agree that they generally are way too quick to close schools around here, and the two-hour delay idea is generally misused, but this particular non-event seems like just what the delay schedule *should* be used for.

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2. 

   Edgy January 18, 2007

   Perhaps, marc. I taught at schools in Boston and in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and granted, the towns were better prepared to deal with poor weather, but we NEVER had a two-hour delay. Either there was a blizzard and school was cancelled or school was on.

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3. 

   marc January 18, 2007

   While I hate to be in the position of defending Bilbo Dodson, I think the two-hour delay was the right way to go. All the weather guessers (not just the accuhunch crowd, but the NWS and the rest, too) were saying there was the potential for an ice event, that could hit anytime after about 3am up until about 6pm, depending on how the temperatures changed in relation to the timing of the precipitation. Rather than get the kiddies to school, only to have to send them home on rapidly-icing roads when/if the bad weather started (and thus risk a big rant here about "why didn’t they just keep school closed when they knew what the forecast was?"), they opted to take a couple more hours to see if the weather was going to materialize. If it did, change it to "cancelled;" if not, bring them in on the delay schedule and save that snow day for later in the winter.

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4. 

   Edgy January 18, 2007

   It is ridiculous! There is NO reason for a two-hour delay today. What is wrong with these people?

   Reply