Federal Forecasters Knew NYC Storm Wouldn’t Live Up To Hype, Didn't Say Anything

NEW YORK, NY — In the days leading up to Winter Storm Stella's somewhat unimpressive landfall in New York City, federal weather forecasters played up the incoming "blizzard," saying it would likely dump at least 17 inches of snow on the city — and possibly up to 2 feet. As projected, Stella would have been the biggest snowstorm ever to hit NYC in the month of March.

The mayor cancelled school and closed public libraries. The public transit system went into emergency mode. New Yorkers frantically mobbed grocery stores, stocked up on survival gear and prepped for the worst.

But it turns out much of the chaos may have been avoided.

National Weather Service officials admitted Wednesday that they knew as soon as Monday afternoon that Tuesday's storm wouldn't be nearly as dramatic as previously predicted — but decided not to tell the public.

That afternoon, the National Weather Service's computer models began showing snowfall projections for a few major northeastern cities — including NYC — were wrong, a spokeswoman for the federal agency said.

Instead of letting snow-fearing citizens know they were only in for about 4 to 8 inches of snow, though, National Weather Service officials decided not to update snowfall projections until morning, once the storm had already hit.

Their reasoning? In short: Sleet and freezing rain are also dangerous, and it's best not to confuse people.

"This was the prudent thing to do," an NWS spokeswoman told Patch in a statement, "as making a dramatic change in the snowfall forecast and risking having to flip back and forth could produce an unwelcome result of less readiness and vigilance."

"There was still going to be a large impact on the morning commute in many areas," she said, "despite the lower snowfall beginning to show up in some, but not all, of the forecasts."

The service's head forecast honcho said in an interview with the Associated Press that telling people the truth about what kind of weather to expect could end up causing what is called "the windshield wiper effect." Dramatically changing a forecast can cause more confusion than clarity, Greg Carbin, chief of forecast operations at the Weather Prediction Center, told the AP.

"The nature of the beast is that there's always uncertainty in every forecast and we have to get better at describing that," Carbin said.

For future storm forecasts, the NWS will try to more clearly present the least likely, most likely and worst case scenarios, in an attempt to better emphasize the uncertainty, a spokeswoman told Patch.

A rapid shift in Stella's track caused "a quicker and farther north transition to mixed precipitation and rain," putting NYC right on the split between rain and snow, the National Weather Service had explained as the situation unfolded. Areas of upstate New York were still hit hard with massive amounts of snow — but New York City was left feeling largely duped.

Photo by Simone Wilson/Patch