Good evening everyone. I hope your week has gone well and are looking forward to the week.

I do want to provide a summary of this week’s events. As predicted, schools did end up closing on Thursday due to snow in the morning hours. Some locations received an inch, others received up to 3 inches. The 2 to 4 inch forecast was on the high-side and should have been adjusted slightly downwards before the event; otherwise, the event was well predicted.

The elephant blunder in the room is today’s prediction. I had expected region-wide delays with isolated closings — the opposite turned out to be true: almost all schools throughout NE PA, even some schools in the Lehigh Valley, decided to close.

Why did this blunder occur? The logic behind the prediction was past events that had -25*F wind chill values typically resulted in region-wide delays. However, this did not pan out because the -20s wind chills would remain constant throughout the day: no warming would occur, rendering a delay useless. This is why schools decided to close, among other factors such as blowing snow. I remember a severe wind chill event during the 2013-14 winter when values got as low as -40*F in the morning but they warmed up to -10*F by the afternoon — schools in response closed region-wide. Arguably, this event had the lowest afternoon wind chill values than in my collection past events. I should have considered the lack of warming more when making the prediction.

More concerning, the current accuracy for this winter is a horrible 60% (3 correct out of 5 formally predicted events). This is not something I am proud of and quite frankly needs a turn around. I have ran into these situations before and have bounced back, so I am dedicated to tackling the weather head-on and doing the best I can. These events are always learning opportunities and long-time followers of this service are the ones especially who keep me motivated.

Looking forward, I am hearing discussion about snow and ice on Monday/Tuesday, so we need to keep an eye on this. In the meantime, have a great weekend and stay warm.