Last night will go down as one of the biggest botched winter weather forecasts in Pittsburgh in quite some time. Nearly every outlet we track was forecasting 3-6″ in the city<\/a>, which is way off from the 0.00″ we actually got overnight. Snow showers will come down during the day today, so we aren’t yet evaluating\u00a0how off<\/em> the forecasts were; we will assign our accuracy scores tomorrow after all the snow has ended.<\/p>\n

The question we are asking is\u00a0why didn’t the forecasters change their predictions after yesterday’s models\u00a0clearly<\/span> showed dry air playing a factor?<\/em><\/p>\n

It was clear to us at PGH Snow Day that dry air was going to hold down snow totals. That’s why we got rid of our “Delays Likely” school delay forecast yesterday afternoon, and why we downgraded our snow totals. (We were still off<\/a> – but by less than we would have been if we did not update our forecast.) We made these changed because the models were clearly decreasing their accumulation forecasts with each run as they determined just how strong that dry slot was going to be:<\/p>\n

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Latest NAM shows less than 2" in Pittsburgh with dry slot limiting overnight accumulation. Just one run, but a concern for snow lovers. pic.twitter.com\/VP1TesC6kT<\/a><\/p>\n

— Pittsburgh Snow Day (@pghsnowday) March 13, 2017<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n