I live in Washington, D.C. If you listened to what the National Weather Service was saying, you’ll know that I survived a giant snowstorm on March 13 and 14. Except there was no giant snowstorm.
I’m not just saying that because I’m from Ohio and spent four years in the snow belt. Snow began falling on Monday. That afternoon, weather models were forecasting that the storm would be closer to the coast than previously expected. In other words, there wouldn’t be as much snow as the NWS had predicted.
Nonetheless, the NWS decided to stick with their original model. For New York, they predicted 18 to 24 inches of snow.
Only seven inches fell.
Given that the NWS was so obviously wrong and sensationalized matters from their privileged public pulpit, it’s time to consider scrapping their funding entirely.
This isn’t the first time their predictions have been off. When 10 inches of snow fell on New York in January 2015, the NWS had predicted up to 36 inches.
If you’re like me, one of the first things you do in the morning is Google “weather” to bring up the day’s forecast at a glance. Here’s a fun fact: Google gets its weather information from The Weather Channel, which has not relied on forecasts from the NWS since 2002.
Guess what? The Weather Channel’s forecast was right. Same story with the Capital Weather Gang at the Washington Post, which I often check for local weather news. They were, from the very first whisperings of a snowstorm, cautious: giving only about a 30 percent chance of a major snowstorm. They updated their forecast as the models changed, trying to temper expectations.
Jason Samenow of the Capital Weather Gang recently wrote an article about how the National Weather Service made a mistake in overplaying its prediction. He’s right to say that such a mistake erodes public trust in the NWS. We all know the story of the boy who cried wolf. Moreover, those who report on the weather can easily fact-check their news. All they have to do is step outside.
The NWS was wrong. When the forecast became more apparent, they held a meeting and decided to double-down on their prediction rather than update it accordingly. The chief of forecast operations at the Weather Prediction Center in Maryland said, “I actually think in the overall scheme that the actions (by states and cities) taken in advance of the event were exceptional.” This amounts to overt praise of taxpayers’ money being wasted on something that didn’t need to be done.
When we want to hear about the weather, we want to be given the most accurate information — not the worst-case scenario. In any sort of journalism, if you continually give people the worst-case scenario, you’ll continually be proven wrong, and you’re not going to be viewed as very credible. What allows this to persist is the lack of an accountability mechanism: we know we can “vote with our dollar” most of the time, but we don’t get a say when the funding comes from our taxes.
According to the NWS, they stuck with their forecast because they didn’t want to “confuse” the public.
I’m a member of the public, and I’m very confused.
Why was the NWS wrong while private weather forecasters were right? Why did the NWS predict a minimum of 18 inches of snow when only seven inches fell? Why are we giving these unrepentant meteorologists any of our tax dollars at all?
Michael Hall is the North American communications associate at Students For Liberty.
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