Here's a great idea! Quit talking about it before Monday night or Tuesday!!! I realize that life in the "Belfort Furniture Weather Center" can get very boring, but trying to forecast snow 5 days early is just ridiculous. You've been wrong all year. Maybe 2013 isn't meant to be a snow year. And yes, I know we do have snow in March. I remember 1958 and 1993.
I have to agree with Pat, this early prediction is almost as good as say listening to a groundhog. Want to know a place where government cuts should be made, try NOAA. Their performance is dismal at best compared to the billions they spend each year. All they do is send a bunch of idiots running to the store to load up on snacks, milk and bread. Then the big storm hits and the roads are perfectly dry by noon. It's not that I am against weather prediction, it's mostly the hype and inferring accuracy that burns my grits. Want to know if it is raining, put your hand out the window.
I don't think those affected by Sandy would agree. NOAA pretty much nailed everything about that storm (correction, storms; they even got the phasing and timing of the phasing between the hurricane and the other storm correct). In the process they allowed local and federal governments the time they needed to prepare and, in the process, probably saved quite a few lives. I don't think businesses that rely on knowing what the weather is going to be a week or more in advance would agree (truckers, shippers, etc). For them, storm estimates that are within 50-100 miles of being on the money (which most of our near misses have been) probably save them billions of dollars per year (I've often thought that NOAA should be compensated by those companies; if they were, they'd probably be rolling in dough). It blows my mind how there are people out there who are so unimpressed when meteorologists can look at the current conditions (and places where most human beings would see absolutely nothing) and predict (correctly) that a storm would form and, not only that, predict it's course within 100 miles or so. Simply amazing!
Pat