Hi there, everyone! I hope everyone had a great Christmas. This week instead of trying to decipher what Dean Blevins has to say, we're going to try and re-create the run-up to yesterday's Oklahoma City Christmas "snowstorm."
The weather week started off as it should, with Lord Gary England announcing that there may be a Winter Weather Event. Smartly, he refused to make a definitive prediction.
Like the wise man that he is, Lord Gary would not weigh in on the storm again before Christmas. The rest of the local weathermen, well... the same cannot be said for them. They let the hype begin:
Channel 25's Jon Slater thought we could see a blizzard.
Rick Mitchell's replacement at Channel, 5, Damon Lane, teased the snowfall as close to record-breaking.
His colleague Danielle Dozier agreed.
On Christas Eve, Slater thought 6-8 inches sounded about right.
Damon Lane tweeted out a wacky model that had Enid getting 30 inches, but OKC less than 3.
Rick Smith of the National Weather Service helpfully pointed out what was becoming apparent: no one had any idea what was happening.
Next time I'll remember to listen to him.
Damon Lane decided it was time to firm up some predictions.
Oh yeah, and David Payne had shown us one model that had OKC getting 20 inches.
Steve Lackmeyer said what we were all thinking....
And then David Payne decided 8 inches sounded about right.
Channel 4's Chase Thomason gave his Christmas forecast the morning of Christmas Eve. 3-6 inches!
But updated it again before the day was over. 4-8 inches "will be common in and around OKC!"
But then Jon Slater said something ominous! The storm was changing directions!
Rusty McCranie still had faith we'd get a decent amount.
And then, in the middle of the night, Jon Slater called it all off. There would be no White Christmas for Oklahoma City.
People were sad.
Some of us were angry, and people called us out on it.
And that guy's right! We can't predict snowstorms well. But then again, it doesn't seem like the actual weathermen can either, at least not too reliably. And, more importantly, we don't run television commercials all the time about how awesome we are at predicting the weather and how amazing all our fancy equipment is and all the awards we've won for meteorology prowess.
Predicting the weather must be an incredibly hard job, and maybe snow in particular is tough. I'm sure all the local meteorologists do the best job they can, but next time around we should all be incredibly chastened before getting excited about a promised White Christmas.
Ho, ho, ho :(
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That is all for this week. Follow me on Twitter here. Good bye!
