Meteorologists - Rat Bastards

[SciFi Chick]

I don't want to hear a lot of jokes about this. An explanation might be nice, but I've really fucking had it with forecasts in the U.S. They are absolute shit! I'm not landmarking. I've obviously been obsessed with weather forecasts since getting into sailing. For six weeks, they NEVER get the wind right. Never! And I mean, it comes from 180 degrees in the opposite direction. They also NEVER get the wave prediction right. Twice, we've gone on the ocean with forecasts of one to two foot waves and winds in our favor, and it's always 100% bullshit. And no, this rant isn't based on just two incidents, but I'm in the middle of one of them right now, and my mom is a wreck.

These meteorologists should be held accountable. If I did this shit work in my job, I would be fired. They either need to fucking get it right or just say they can't predict certain things. I can look out my motherfucking window and do a better job than these assholes who are getting paid for shit forecasts. I think they should be forced to go through the kind of chop I'm going through every time they get it wrong.

[pumpkinpi]

Are you watching the news reporters, or going straight to the actual scientists, like NOAA or the National Weather Service?

[SciFi Chick]

Are you watching the news reporters, or going straight to the actual scientists, like NOAA or the National Weather Service?

We are going straight to the NOAA and the National Weather Service. To be fair, not all of their weather predictions are bad, but they can't predict waves for shit!

[Cyborg Girl]

Interesting you mention this is NOAA; I've noticed they are very conservative about snow forecasts, and almost always predict far less than my town gets.

[vendic]

Forecast for today was less than 1 foot waves, swell from the North, winds 5-9mph.

We got, 3-6 foot waves from the South, so we were headed right into them and wind was Easterly at about 1 mph so we couldn't even put the sails up. When I say 3-6 footers, I'm talking over the cabin top high. There is no way they can be less than 1 foot in anyone's language.

The biggest problem is when we got got there it was about 2 foot. After about two hours it increased. We exited at West Palm beach and the next available inlet was Boca Raton. So we had the choice of staying in the crap or turning back almost the same distance. We kept going. Then we got hit with two nearby squalls that generated the 6 footers. Short period nasty stuff. The forecast when we left was cloudy, light winds and near calm water. We got thunderstorms, further out, no wind and the crazy waves.

I saw a guy in a Gemin 3200 sail boat try to sail, he pulled his sails in soon after. His boat was bouncing bow to stern into the water. He had a bigger boat than ours but it sure didn't handle the conditions as good. We only had one wave go over the top and get us a little wet but he was in the drink over and over.

r.e. services we used, NOAA, surf reports for the area, local services and passage weather. They pretty much take it from NOAA I imagine. They did amend the forecast once it was already bad to a SCA (small craft advisory). The problem is that I knew it was bad before they updated it.

I just checked passage weather (usually the most accurate) and it is still saying under .5m waves. W.T.F.

[pumpkinpi]

Interesting you mention this is NOAA; I've noticed they are very conservative about snow forecasts, and almost always predict far less than my town gets.

We always get less than the NWS predicts! Only marginally, though. If they say 6-8", we'll get about 5".