Thanksgiving Morning: So How did my forecast make out?

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Thanks for all the interactions and following yesterday, I really appreciate it and it makes this so much more fun to do. Hopefully to some extent I kept some of you ahead of the storm though my analysis this past 5 days. This storm was brutal from a forecasting standpoint. We had the air cold enough for snow in all areas above the surface, but surface temperatures were always the issue. I tried my best over the last few days to drive that point home especially I-95 south knowing that the margin would be paper thin between rain and accumulating snow. With that being said, lets call a spade a spade and say I did not take my totals down for areas along 95 and still had a general 2-5" band there. This did not verify and was a busted area of my forecast. The whole weather community including the pros had a tough time with this storm, but hey that's what makes this so much fun to track. Who doesn't like a challenge?

The goal of this blog is and always will be not to nowcast and instead evaluate all the factors that influence the weather or the development of a particular storm and take a stand on the issue with an actual forecast. Some might call that a little too bold and aggressive but I think its a rare thing these days. Just turn on the Weather Channel and watch them change their forecast literally every 12 hours. Whats the point of that? The weather is and always will be hard to predict which means the nature of my methods will result in failure sometimes. But you know what, this isn't my day job haha so that's ok to me. As long as I am right more times than I am wrong this blog will be a success.

So here where the final reported snowfall totals..

Below was my final snow forecast map issued Tuesday morning. I graded it..

So basically I got two regions wrong and was too high with amounts and three regions right where the amounts roughly fell in the ranges I had. Elevation was a huge factor in this! Hackettstown NJ at 500ft had 3.4" while a few miles down the road up on Schooleys Mountain at 1,000ft (where I was for the storm) had at least 8". That comes out to a 60% which is not a passing grade. 

But maybe you guys will give me some points for having this original map out on Sunday morning    ;-)..

I will let you guys be the judge and determine if that time value brings me up to a passing grade on this storm lol.

Stay tuned guys this is only the beginning. I am expecting a very active winter. Things should warm up a little after the next few days of cold, then based on many factors I look at, I think by the 2nd week of December winter comes and is here for real! I will start posting on the long range pattern tomorrow.