Climate - Nashville Severe Weather

You can contact us @NashSevereWx on Twitter.

Warning! Science coming!

Don’t worry. We are not real scientists. We are scientists the way Jesse Pinkman is a scientist:

Except, what we do is not illegal.

We are these guys:

We take what we do seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

We are media partners with NWS-Nashville.

We do weather. Not climate.

What exactly is the difference?

This

is weather.

Local example: also weather.

This

is climate.

The media loves to confuse weather with climate.

Think of it this way.

Today’s weather is one grain of sand.

Climate is billions of grains of sand. Climate is the beach.

One black grain of sand won’t make Siesta Key black. A white grain of sand won’t make a Black Sand Beach white.

So, snow doesn’t disprove global warming. 70° in February doesn’t prove it, either.

You can talk climate over decades, centuries, millennia.

Or, you can do 3-4 month/seasonal outlooks.

Like this one. In the Fall of 2014, this snowfall outlook for the winter predicted this much snowfall:

Climatology for “normal” means 30 years:

Our last snow > 1″ was February 9, 2011.

Black boxes show the last 1″+ snows we’ve had since 1/1/2011.

Purple circle shows our last 1″+ snow.

Yellow boxes show measurable snowfall in 2015.

We’ve been missing snow.

1/15/15

2/12/14 Snow cover (satellite)

Or, if you prefer jalapenos on your map:

Just This Week:

Behold the Snowdome.

Our current Less Than 1″ streak is pretty unusual.

Middle TN Severe Weather Climatology

As I said, we do weather.

What’s happening right now with the weather? That’s simple:

Forecasting the weather is incredibly complex.

The atmosphere often does different things at once. A lot is going on, and it’s always changing.

That information comes from weather balloons launched at 12z (6 AM) and 0z (6 PM) every day.

Lauched from 102 sites (including Nashville) in the US, Caribbean, and the Pacific.

The data is then fed into massive supercomputers which produce models. Because there is very little data to input, the computers have to “solve” the atmospheric dynamics, and predict what will happen next.

Close in time: the models are smart. Far away from time: not so smart.

Some people demand a level of certainty and specificity that exceeds the state of the science. We just aren’t that good.

A forecast — especially a medium range forecast — is an expression of probabilities, not a binary expression of right/wrong. A forecast is like a football game: you don’t know the final score until the end. You wouldn’t say the score at halftime should be the final score. The forecast is telling a story; it does not pay off until the end.

But then the iPhone came along, and the weather community royally screwed up by making what is a complex, changing, and variable forecast a “finished and simple” product. This is a disservice to the public.

Enough of models.

What we do: We “nowcast.”

We’re radar translators.