First post!!!

I can think of no hobby as time-consuming and un-rewarding as weather tracking.

Last Thursday, the GFS, Euro, NAM, UKmet, and pretty much every other weather model out there was showing a major snowstorm for the Philadelphia/Baltimore/DC corridor. I was rather pissed at the time - storm was being surpressed to the south of NYC leaving Philly with a foot and NYC with an inch. Models were consistent with that solution through Friday.

I woke up Saturday morning to see the models were creating a secondary low off the Carolina coast that would track up the east coast, giving all major cities from Boston down to DC a blizzard. NOR'EASTAH!!! Henry Margusity of Accuweather was giggling like a schoolgirl on his video blog, and pro mets up and down the Northeast were hyping up the VALENTINE'S DAY BLIZZARD OF 2007. Ahhh wintertime oh wintertime, pattern of life indelible. I was so psyched beyond belief.

Went to bed that night feeling warm and fuzzy inside. Woke up the following morning feeling the same way. Models remained consistent through the night. Then the GFS came in... if I'm recalling correctly it was the 6z run. Very ugly... massive rainstorm for the coastal cities with the snow being kept mostly inland. Ugh. NAM and Euro followed suit. Soon the only model showing a blizzard for NYC was the UKmet (I like to call her the Ukie). Ukie dearest, unfortunately, can't deal with rain/snow lines, which isn't surprising since it's all rain, all the time in the UK. But weather n00bs (and Joe Bastardi, for some reason) around the internet clung to this model anyhow.

By Monday morning, all models except the Ukie were showing a rainstorm for the I-95 corridor; even worse than yesterday's runs that showed at least a few inches of snow and ice. But the ensembles were still showing some snow and ice for me. This, naturally, spawned an entire debate about ensembles vs operationals, but such is the life of a weather hobbyist.

But even the ensembles were only showing a few inches of snow/ice. This wasn't enough - I needed a bloody blizzard!!! So what did I do? Tuesday night I drove to Vermont, forcasted to be ground zero for this storm. More on that later.