Do you listen to Chicken Little? Is the sky really about to fall? In the last few days I’ve seen a lot of posts on Facebook and Twitter that discuss the possibility of impending winter weather, snow, ice, and Arctic blasts for later in January. Some of them are from reputable meteorologists; many more are from inexperienced “wish-casters” (as opposed to real forecasters) who really want to see snow in the Southeast and push every possibility from long-range weather forecasts, no matter how unlikely they are.
Folks like UGA’s Marshall Shepherd and Birmingham broadcast meteorologist James Spann call these wish-casters “media-rologists” because they are all about getting clicks on social media, even when the forecast is way too far in advance to have any real skill (forecasters know that anything specific beyond about seven days is pure speculation, although some large-scale trends can be identified two to three weeks out). So don’t fall prey to these extreme forecasts, since there is little useful information in them, and in fact they might be quite wrong.
James Spann has a great blog post on this today at https://www.alabamawx.com/?p=98058.
The Capital Weather Gang also posted a similar story online today here. And iWeatherNet reposted their commentary on seasonal and storm-specific snowfall hype here.
Marshall Shepherd’s recommendations for how to deal with them: 1. Know the source 2. Confirm against a credible or trusted source like National Weather Service or your favorite media source 3. Do not blindly share and continue inaccurate viral spreading.
