Is it me or are our weather forecasters getting worse or what? They blew hurricane Mathew miserably. Now this stupid snow storm. They were saying my local would get up to 12 inches of snow. Then they dropped it to 4 to 8". We got about an inch of snow but a whole fricking bunch of freezing rain. I had a tent in the back yard full of my stuff from the flood that I was using for temporary storage. All the talk of 12 inch snows got me working mine and my wife's butts off the other night bringing that stuff in and taking the tent down so the snow would not crush it.

I would have been better off leaving the stuff in the tent cause now 2 rooms in my house are full of stuff and I got to move it again so I can get mey laminate floors put down this week.

I don't remember them missing forecasts as bad as they do now. Your better off doing nothing to prepare because You get hit by something different than what they forecasted. They did not say anything about flooding rain during mathew until a few hours before it hit this area and by then it was too late to prepare and sure as he77 wouldn't have saved any lives in my household cause by then, I could already see that they didnt have any better idea than I did on what was going to happen. I dont need a weather presenter to tell me what the weather is doing. Any idiot can look out the window. I need a weather forecaster that can get some kind of positive consistency and doesn't have to be right all the time but can make some good calls when it matters.

I know for our area, weather forecasting can be really difficult with the mountains to the west and the Atlantic to our east creating the marine layer and almost daily summer sea breeze thunderstorms but come on man! It has been Years with billions of dollars worth of money thrown at uping better forecast models and I swear if they ain't getting worse instead of better.

I know a couple really good indicators from mother nature that tells me when things are going to get nasty. One is sun dogs. The little rainbow/flare looking things you see out to the sides of the sun sometimes. You see them, to my experience you got a 95% chance of rain within the next 2 days of seeing it. That also goes for a ring around the sun or moon or Halos. It all means the same thing. Ice crystals in the incoming clouds are refracting the sunlight giving the effect of the sun dog or halos. Mostly these are seen the last 3 or 4 hours of daylight. Great weather indicators. I look for them all the time while doing fieldwork and when i see them, I will make plans with my work around them. They are that good. I have seen it rain when no one was calling for it but saw a sun dog a day or two before.

Another indicator to look for is the old calm before the storm. I have seen this with Isabel, Mathew and several really bad thunderstorms. If a hurricane is forecast to affect you on a certain day and the day before is eerily calm, Look Out! get prepared quickly cause your gonna get slammed. a few minutes to a couple hours before a line of thunderstorms hits can tell you the same thing. If it gets quiet, be vigilant and take cover.

These are some things that no billion dollar satellite can tell you about the upcoming weather. And Possibly could save Your life. If you look for them. They really need to up their game on the hurricane models. They were doing better jobs ten years ago than they are today. I still haven't heard a good explanation for the complete and utter failure of forecasting that storm. I remember the last I heard them say was...(Yeah, it went straight out from Hatteras and died) like they knew it was going to do that all along when in fact the Euro model had it looping back to Florida. The center might have went out off of Hatteras but the rain sheared off of it and went up the coast. They didn't know what it was going to do until it showed them and they watched it on radar do it just like everybody else did. How much do they get paid to do the same thing that I could do? WTH do they need a degree in meteorology for when all they do now is read off what a fricking computer is telling them its going to do. I don't need some nice looking model giving the weather if she doesn't know anything but what a computer tells her. She could be hideous looking if she knows her stuff cause thats what we need. Its the weather for cripes sake not a fashion show. And cut out all the PC crap on the weather channel with global warming. Its all cycles not that GW bull. Natural cycles. All kinds of cycles in nature. An easy one to understand is women. You know what I.m talking about. Stop showing stupid shows that have very little to do with weather and show the dag blasted weather and keep Your stinking politics out of it. Climate change has been going on since the earth was created. It has little to do with Man. To be that arrogant to think We could be that powerful to control weather is absurd. Its about control and making money. Pulled out of someones rear end.CF