Joe Bastardi is certainly one of my favorite meteorologists, and I always hope that he is correct on his forecasts (which he usually is), but being the huge snow lover that I am, I really hope his forecast is not correct for a big thaw come January, and not much of a winter. With that said, he does not deserve any kind of crap for his forecasts. It is nearly impossible to predict certain kind of storms and weather patterns, and he does an incredible job of accurately doing so. His blog today talked about how he was getting lots of nasty comments, emails, and even blogs due to the blog he posted on the storm. Something to do with him not predicting something about the western side of the monster snowstorm that slammed the I-95 corridor. You really got to give the guy a break, first off he was the only one who predicted the storm after everyone else switched the idea to an out to sea storm. Second he was right when he said this was one for the east coast. NYC picked up 20 inches of snow. Finally, although it really wasn't exactly my definition of a "snowy pattern" it certainly had a blockbuster storm included in it (almost 2), and absolutely freezing temperatures. His forecast in november called for a freezing record breaking December. So there is no reason he should get anything negative said about his forecasts. Now back to the patterns. Some interesting ones seem to lye ahead.
The snowy december pattern that Bastardi predicted, never really happened. I will admit though everything was there for it. The jet stream, the temperatures, even the moisture. The only problem was that there was not enough of the moisture. So his forecasting was dead on, however the moisture did not really work on his side, even though is certainly came through the other day. So now the next step in the winter forecast which has head me in a snow depression... His prediction of a thaw. January, the coldest month of the year for most, is predicted by Bastardi to be warm, and not good for storms to develope. Lately it seems like he is on a role with the monster snow in december, and now the recent model prediction of a that. But what the models are now showing is that it was be a short thaw, so I can breath a sigh of relief. Actually, the GFS shows a pattern similar to december at least as far as temperatures go. Hopefully during this period we can get some storms to come by! Before I go I would just like to say that overall I think the GFS model handled this storm the best, and handled the last one well too. My forecast that I gave on the 24th was fairly off. 4-6 inches was predicted in NYC, and I thought I was over dueing it. I guess anything can happen with an east coast snowstorm!
-Scott Pecoriello
