SHOULD THE NATIONAL WEATHER SERVICE PERSIST IN A WEATHER FORECAST THAT IT KNOWS IS WRONG? The National Weather Service issued forecasts that New York City and other coastal cities would get 24 inches of snow on Tuesday March 14. On Monday March 13, the predictions of the computer models changed. The National Weather Service decided not to make the change in forecast public. The snowfall in New York City turned out to be 7 to 8 inches.
This article by Dave Burke in the Daily Mail for Wednesday March 15 had the headline “National Weather Service KNEW it was exaggerating the effects of Storm Stella but decided not to change its forecast because the public might get confused.” The article says that on Monday March 13, the day before the storm was expected to begin, “experts from the National Weather Service in Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Washington discussed computer models that predicted less snow than initially expected. But they decided to keep the extreme weather warnings in place….”
This New York Post article gives an additional reason offered by the weather service. They claimed “they didn’t change their forecast for fear people would mistakenly think the storm was no longer dangerous.”