Watching The Weather: The Results

While yesterday’s nor’easter didn’t make for an ideal day for outdoor activities, it wasn’t the apocalyptic mess meteorologists predicted on Friday. We recorded the professional assessments of what would happen, and today we reveal how accurate they were on a scale of 1-to-5 shovels (1 meaning they were so wrong we ran errands in shorts, 5 meaning it was like they called the Psychic Hotline).*

Channel 4
WBZ loses points right off the bat for predicting “additional moderate snowfall accumulation.” After dealing with a nightmare commute on Thursday, we would call 8.8 additional inches of snow back-breaking. But the timing of the precipitation was pretty accurate.

Rating: 3 shovels

Channel 5
Like WBZ, the good folks at WCVB also use the National Weather Service when preparing their forecasts. Kinda cheesy. But we’re giving them an extra half-shovel anyway because their graphic called for the snow to move in Saturday evening. We saw flakes flying in Brookline as we made a dash for the T at 11:50 Saturday night.

Rating: 3.5 shovels

Channel 7
The snow moved in a little before midnight, so the News Station loses some points there. But WHDH was the first to commit to a rain-snow map, which was pretty accurate. Bonus points to the station for sticking its neck out.

Rating: 3.5 shovels

Channel 25
There were no words for this forecast. Not because it was off the mark, but because the station used almost no words. The storm did bring a rain-snow mix, but we’re unimpressed with the Fox weather team’s online presence, so we deducted some points.

Rating: 2 shovels

The meteorologists were fairly accurate this time, but we’ll keep watching them during major snow events. We may even be back as soon as Wednesday if some long-term forecasts are to be believed.

*Please note: Our only qualification to judge any weather forecaster is owning a weather set when we were kids. Our ratings are arbitrary and unscientific (and yet strangely awesome).