Local Meteorologist Responds to 'Snow Hype'

Following up on Saturday's Winter Weather Update, meteorologists from the local TV outlets were invited to respond to the hype surrounding the latest weather NON-event.

After several days of build-up and foretelling of snow and winter weather, residents in the communities east of Huntsville and around Madison county woke to... nothing.

Flash back just a few days to Jan 10 when the forecast of violent weather was so dire that many schools and businesses closed early or took other preventative measures in order to be safe. On that day, as with this past weekend, the ominous weather conditions did come to fruition, just not in Huntsville.

Granted the weather is a very difficult beast to predict, even in the best of circumstances so shouldn't we be willing to cut these guys a little slack and give them the benefit of the doubt? They can't be expected to get it right every time can they? Well, in fact, some of them did.

Just because you see it on TV...

As early as Thursday one local television meteorologist and his team started revising the gloom and doom forecast toward a much lighter, and in fact more accurate, prediction of what would come to pass. Brad Huffines and the WAAY weather team began putting the word out that the threat for frozen precipitation in our area was less and less. Was Huffines and his team privy to some special information the other stations were not made aware of? Absolutely not! As so often happens when events of this nature are in the outlook, the National Weather Service gave a briefing at 10 a.m. Friday to go over their forecast and what they were predicting. At that briefing the NWS began downplaying the event for our area and forecast the band of snow and frozen precipitation that ultimately fell from Tuscaloosa through Birmingham to Atlanta. So the question has to be, if the National Weather Service and at least one of your peers is calling for a non-event, shouldn't the weather teams from WAFF and WHNT have re-evaluated their positions? Shouldn't they have at least said it MIGHT not happen? They should, but they didn't.

After such a huge miss on Saturday, East of Huntsville emailed each of the local media outlets to offer then the opportunity to share their opinions on what happened. In his reply, Huffines from WAAY air of sensationalism created around every weather event in the area that local residents have become over sensitive to negative weather reports.

"The weather can be scary enough," says Huffines. "Broadcasters who scare should be removed from the industry, but it will take the viewers to do that with their remotes."

So now what?

So how do we as individuals know who trust and what to believe? Why can't we just turn on the TV or hit the Internet and get a single, correct forecast? The most likely answer to that question has to do with rating. Local TV news programs have to compete just like the other shows for viewers and ratings. Since most of the outlets, and especially the weather portion of the broadcast, cover the same stories they are forced to try and differentiate themselves with the personalities.

Huffines suggests we "STOP believing claims and forecasts, test out the forecasters, and reject those that are consistently over-promising disaster and delivering empty results. If consumers stop eating at their table of hype, then the restaurant will either close or adapt to the changing wants of would-be consumers." I agree. Send an email to each one of them and let them know what we expect from them. But don't stop there, be sure to let them know when they're doing it right too! I know they will appreciate it!

Brad Huffines at WAAY-31

Dan Satterfield at WHNT-19

Brad Trais at WAFF-48

Be sure to let them know you are responding to this story from East of Huntsville and let them know how you feel! Be sure to leave a comment here on East of Huntsville also and share your experiences with everyone.