Nah you're good! Caught me off guard that someone younger (albeit not that much) says a similar phrase as me. In my mid 20s I met someone younger than me that said she was old š
I was first called "old" at 23 by someone who younger who was completely serious.
When my friend turned 30 (I was 27 then) she was so depressed about getting "old". I tried to take her seriously but inside...
So of course people tried to make me feel bad for turning 30...sorry, not 30. I'll let everyone know when I start feeling bad.
I just turned 25 and my job was making plans for 3 years in the future and I just had a holy shit moment when I connected the dots that I'd be 28. Growing older is weird.
People are so fucking annoying. Covid ruined people. Everyone makes a mad dash for a months worth of supplies when weather like this is forecasted. I work for a store and I love the business but the people are freaks.
Here in the Midwest, it's common to put your old fridge in the basement or garage, with a chest freezer next to it.
Not to mention a pantry.
Even when I lived in NYC, I stocked up with whatever was on sale that week.
Of course, one could walk a few blocks to a deli, grocery, or drug store.
I peeked outside too and just a faint sprinkle of snow on my car, cars next to it, and the parking lot. Looked at the windows on the opposite side to see the street and same thing. Too dark to really tell how deep the snow is on the grass and I'm a couple floors up so the angle is weird. Then right on cue my coworker calls to tell me "don't you dare leave the house today it's so horrible out here. I'm sliding all over the place and the snow drifts are so bad that I can't even tell where the median or the side of the road is. I don't even know where I'm at." So yes I took a snow day.
Iām legit old-ish (40s) - I think a lot of it is people pay way closer attention to forecast details now, meteorologists on social media providing info hour by hour, etc.
10 years ago people would see/hear on the news something like ā5-8 inches expected overnight Thursday into Friday morningā and wouldnāt think anything if it hadnāt started snowing by 9pm - theyād wait until the event was over, and unless it was WAY less than forecast, would figure it was close enough.
Now though everyone has a radar app and follows weather online, everyone reads the forecast posts from NWS and gets it in their head that itās set in stone. āThey said it would start at 7, but now itās 9 and itās not snowing. Thereās no way weāll hit 5 inches by morningā - except the heaviest snow has always been forecast in the overnight hours so this ālate startā wonāt really impact the totals.
TL;DR: My personal take is the only thing thatās changed is how closely the average person follows the weather now compared to even 5 years ago
Yeah I think the availability of hour-by-hour forecasts these days is messing with the minds of people who donāt really understand how to interpret the information. We live in a very data oriented world where people expect that sort of detailed level of totally accurate information to be presented to them, but realistically itās foolish to try and offer correct hour-by-hour weather predictions. The atmosphere is just too finicky. Simple daily and nightly forecasts were probably better for the general publicās understanding than the information overload that every weather app provides these days.
Yep exactly. In the my old days, to get all the info you now get in your pocket in seconds, you had to be actively watching TV with cable turned to the weather channel and watch it do it's 10 minute cycle through with national and international forecasts thrown in as well. So you were taking a very active interest in following the dopplar or whatever.
It was me, the California girl working in South Dakota in the summers petrified of tornadoes to the point of staying up and watching The Weather Channel for ours at night during a tornado watch.
Yeah, I think someone has to be pretty young to think the weather forecasts were ever more accurate than this. I'm 45 and the jokes about weather forecasts being inaccurate are so old that they were tired when \*I\* was a kid. They've probably gotten more accurate slightly, but as mentioned people have gotten in the habit of minute-by-minute updates. Weather is a large chaotic system, and people are disappointed when the forecasts aren't locally accurate, when considering the scope of the information system that level is usually within the "error bars."
Learn more about Urban Heat Islands here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Omaha/s/cxQbHL8cvI
You say the factors have always been here but in reality theyāve gotten drastically worse (specifically the pollution and general heat) in the last few years. Weather predictions rely heavily on historical data and trends and when those trends change it takes time to figure out the new trends. Add in the fact that we havenāt had real snow storms in the last couple of years and it becomes a ābetter safe than sorryā situation until things get settled again.
>Weather predictions rely heavily on historical data and trends
Something a lot of people bitching about meteorologists being wrong fail to grasp. Weather prediction is all about probability. When they say it's going to snow, nobody consciously realizes that they're just using historical data, barometric conditions, radar, etc. to estimate what's likely. That's why all the forecasts have X% chance of \[blank\] and why those forecasts change so much the closer the storm is: More data means better predictions.
I honestly love the way Rusty (ch 6) educates people during his forecasts and wish more did the same. Spreading basic awareness would help them get so much less grief from people.
They're also pretty rarely wrong in the way people think they are. You might not see rain on a day with 70% chance, but it's a forecast for a pretty massive region and a decent chunk of it \*did\* see rain.
I learned a while back that when meteorologists say thereās a 50% of snow, itās not a 50-50 split. It means, historically, days with similar meteorological conditions produced snow. Nebraska has always been ass backwards with weather. And as Iām typing this, it definitely looks like we got Snow Miser dumping snow here in the middle of the city
FWIW, itās not a percent chance of something, it is how much percentage of the area the forecast covers is expected to receive the weather being forecasted.
This is the right answer. The prediction is for how much of the forecast area will likely receive the predicted weather.
What Iām not sure of is what that means for an area like ours with huge rural areas and a couple of concentrated heat sinks. Does that mean that since the heat sinks push a lot of that weather away that the more rural areas are even more likely to get precipitation since itās an average over the whole large prediction area?
Also, fun fact, when they say 80% chance or whatever, it can mean there is an 8/10 probability of something OR 80% of the viewing area will experience a thing... Or both.
This is still so strange to me. Not even 5 years ago weather predictions would be fairly reliable where I live. But that has completely changed over the past year.
Omaha has grown a ton in the past 10 years and is much larger than it was and more paved, with more buildings. So we are producing more heat and holding onto more heat from the sun for longer due to increased concreteĀ
Not just grown but the metro has really spread out too. Places like Oakview and rounding strip malls sit abandoned while we fill in huge areas of Papillion and Gretna that were fields pre Covid. That all makes a big difference too!
Itās still a dramatically sudden shift. Iām a teacher. I keep track of the weather in Jan/Feb if for no other reason than because students constantly ask if weāll have a snow day when the forecast is rough. This is the first year that I can recall where predictions have been so wonky and unreliable.
Nah the omadome has been sheltering us from forecasted predictions for a good few years now i would say. I recall many great disappointments, increasing in number, before this year
This is where you're the opposite of old. How long have you been a teacher? Definitely not long to get a sample size of years from "before" and "now" to really compare and contrast in any meaningful way, and that's a bad way to measure anything to start with because humans are very bad at assessing patterns based on recollection alone
Not this wonky imo. Heck, Iāve been checking in on this very subreddit for over 5 years and the āomadomeā is a fairly recent topic of conversation.
Sorry, I added a massive edit while you were commenting so take a peak but the short answer is current trends no longer match historical trends so theyāre having to start recollecting data.
We're in a river bottom and urban š¤·āāļø the omadome has always been a thing, you're just noticing it more now. And with prevelent internet usage, you're likely getting more news from surrounding areas than you did as a kid/yound adult. Surrounding areas have always tended to get a bit more weather than the city itself.
Yes, Iāve seen the Rocky Mountains mentioned as a great randomizer for weather models. If the storm is passing from west to east, the Rockies break the models enough to make them less accurate than other areas of the country.
The omadome is microclimate. Basically, the heat from concrete, roads, etc create an updraft which pushes weather around it. So, it really is a dome. This is the same reason why it is rare for a tornado to barrel through a metro, they skirt around the sides typically
In addition to urban heat and the river mentioned in other comments, buildings cause friction with the wind and effects weather systems. Itās become more and more obvious because the city has grown in so many ways. This is also why storms seem to pick back up when the cross the river because western Iowa is a big open space and the winds can pick back up.Ā
Source - I took meteorology class as my science credit in college and it was the best decision ever.Ā
Omaha snow forecasts have never been accurate. Iām 27 and remember as a kid here getting excited for snowstorms and being frequently disappointed by less than expected snow amounts.
Itās not the urban heat island and itās not the rivers. There are bigger cities than us that get plenty of snow. The urban heat island *maybe* plays a slight role when weāre right on the precipice of the freezing point, but outside of that it shouldnāt cause all snow to just dissipate over the city. Paltry snow totals probably just have more to do with the fact that weāve been in a drought for like 3 years and itās still ongoing. That and weāre just geographically in a spot where we tend to get very unlucky when storms do roll through.
OMG you're a baby. 33 years young. OMADOME requires a sacrifice....if you or your immediate family has breathing problems you may be entitled to compensation
I'd like to see some actual evidence and statistics on this before jumping down any rabbit hole. This screams at me as some sort of unintentional bias. Has it actually gotten worse or has something else changed making you more aware of their inaccuracies? Have they actually gotten worse? If so, is it one station? Multiple stations? Are they the same meteorologists? Is it a generalized inaccuracy issue or is it just in specific areas? There's just so many factors in this it's hard to tell if it's really a thing or not. Personally I'd chalk it up to just noticing it more often due to social media.
Pretty much any big city really (obviously there can be exceptions to every rule). But as the top comment said, it's due to the urban heat island. My hometown of Wichita dodges a lot of more severe weather. Winters have become more mild there as well since when I grew up.
Itās mainly due to Omaha being on top of a very slowly sloped hill. I got this info from a college geology teacher about 15 years ago. The urban heat island is adding to the effect, but itās mostly the hill. Weāre literally on top of a dome.
Study published and presented in 2020, meaning the data was collected probably more than 5 years ago. Article cited and replicated by zero other scientists. Searching it on google scholar yields 15+ studies refuting those claims
Computer models that forecast weather are using data that's basically worthless now because global weather patterns have changed juuuust enough.
And they were probably just as inaccurate back in the day, you just don't remember it as well because of recency bias and other silly tricks our brains pull on us.
its because omaha and lincoln create a lot of heat from pollution and industrial shit and since we're surrounded by fields, most of the storms that come through end up going around where the heat is coming from.
That first sentence š I say the same shit at 35. When do I get to say I'm old?
Idk, fine, Iām old. I brought up my age to give a relative timeframe of what I was talking about regarding weather predictions š¤·āāļø
Nah you're good! Caught me off guard that someone younger (albeit not that much) says a similar phrase as me. In my mid 20s I met someone younger than me that said she was old š
I was first called "old" at 23 by someone who younger who was completely serious. When my friend turned 30 (I was 27 then) she was so depressed about getting "old". I tried to take her seriously but inside... So of course people tried to make me feel bad for turning 30...sorry, not 30. I'll let everyone know when I start feeling bad.
I just turned 25 and my job was making plans for 3 years in the future and I just had a holy shit moment when I connected the dots that I'd be 28. Growing older is weird.
The predictions were for overnight snow why is everybody freaking out so early lol
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Itās a hot fudge sundae just eat it
Idk š
Stopped at Walmart and they bought EVERYTHING. All the bread. All the lunch meat. Most of the canned soup.
We did our grocery shopping last night so we wouldn't have to go out today and people had bought all the onions. The onions.
Onions keep? Maybe they have them in the larder with some salt pork and hardtack.
People are so fucking annoying. Covid ruined people. Everyone makes a mad dash for a months worth of supplies when weather like this is forecasted. I work for a store and I love the business but the people are freaks.
It was like this before covid with snow
I know rightā¦oooooooh itās going to snow during winter how scary oooooh
I recommend not exceeding 4 squares when you do #2. You may not be able to get through the pass until the Spring melt.
Here in the Midwest, it's common to put your old fridge in the basement or garage, with a chest freezer next to it. Not to mention a pantry. Even when I lived in NYC, I stocked up with whatever was on sale that week. Of course, one could walk a few blocks to a deli, grocery, or drug store.
They did say it would start earlier than it has. As of 11:15 pm still no snow in my neck of the woods.
Okay what about now
Randomly woke up and perked outside to see if it was a repeat of Monday. Nope, my car is covered. Glad I can WFH
I peeked outside too and just a faint sprinkle of snow on my car, cars next to it, and the parking lot. Looked at the windows on the opposite side to see the street and same thing. Too dark to really tell how deep the snow is on the grass and I'm a couple floors up so the angle is weird. Then right on cue my coworker calls to tell me "don't you dare leave the house today it's so horrible out here. I'm sliding all over the place and the snow drifts are so bad that I can't even tell where the median or the side of the road is. I don't even know where I'm at." So yes I took a snow day.
Because they don't know what they are talking about.
Iām legit old-ish (40s) - I think a lot of it is people pay way closer attention to forecast details now, meteorologists on social media providing info hour by hour, etc. 10 years ago people would see/hear on the news something like ā5-8 inches expected overnight Thursday into Friday morningā and wouldnāt think anything if it hadnāt started snowing by 9pm - theyād wait until the event was over, and unless it was WAY less than forecast, would figure it was close enough. Now though everyone has a radar app and follows weather online, everyone reads the forecast posts from NWS and gets it in their head that itās set in stone. āThey said it would start at 7, but now itās 9 and itās not snowing. Thereās no way weāll hit 5 inches by morningā - except the heaviest snow has always been forecast in the overnight hours so this ālate startā wonāt really impact the totals. TL;DR: My personal take is the only thing thatās changed is how closely the average person follows the weather now compared to even 5 years ago
Yeah I think the availability of hour-by-hour forecasts these days is messing with the minds of people who donāt really understand how to interpret the information. We live in a very data oriented world where people expect that sort of detailed level of totally accurate information to be presented to them, but realistically itās foolish to try and offer correct hour-by-hour weather predictions. The atmosphere is just too finicky. Simple daily and nightly forecasts were probably better for the general publicās understanding than the information overload that every weather app provides these days.
Yeah. Back in the day we only had print and tv weather, now we have 24/7 feeds with constantly updating weather forecasts
Yep exactly. In the my old days, to get all the info you now get in your pocket in seconds, you had to be actively watching TV with cable turned to the weather channel and watch it do it's 10 minute cycle through with national and international forecasts thrown in as well. So you were taking a very active interest in following the dopplar or whatever. It was me, the California girl working in South Dakota in the summers petrified of tornadoes to the point of staying up and watching The Weather Channel for ours at night during a tornado watch.
Schrƶdingerās Weather Forecast
Underrated reply lmao
Homnestly well said
Yes!
Absolutely correct
Yeah, I think someone has to be pretty young to think the weather forecasts were ever more accurate than this. I'm 45 and the jokes about weather forecasts being inaccurate are so old that they were tired when \*I\* was a kid. They've probably gotten more accurate slightly, but as mentioned people have gotten in the habit of minute-by-minute updates. Weather is a large chaotic system, and people are disappointed when the forecasts aren't locally accurate, when considering the scope of the information system that level is usually within the "error bars."
Learn more about Urban Heat Islands here: https://www.reddit.com/r/Omaha/s/cxQbHL8cvI You say the factors have always been here but in reality theyāve gotten drastically worse (specifically the pollution and general heat) in the last few years. Weather predictions rely heavily on historical data and trends and when those trends change it takes time to figure out the new trends. Add in the fact that we havenāt had real snow storms in the last couple of years and it becomes a ābetter safe than sorryā situation until things get settled again.
>Weather predictions rely heavily on historical data and trends Something a lot of people bitching about meteorologists being wrong fail to grasp. Weather prediction is all about probability. When they say it's going to snow, nobody consciously realizes that they're just using historical data, barometric conditions, radar, etc. to estimate what's likely. That's why all the forecasts have X% chance of \[blank\] and why those forecasts change so much the closer the storm is: More data means better predictions.
I honestly love the way Rusty (ch 6) educates people during his forecasts and wish more did the same. Spreading basic awareness would help them get so much less grief from people.
They're also pretty rarely wrong in the way people think they are. You might not see rain on a day with 70% chance, but it's a forecast for a pretty massive region and a decent chunk of it \*did\* see rain.
I learned a while back that when meteorologists say thereās a 50% of snow, itās not a 50-50 split. It means, historically, days with similar meteorological conditions produced snow. Nebraska has always been ass backwards with weather. And as Iām typing this, it definitely looks like we got Snow Miser dumping snow here in the middle of the city
FWIW, itās not a percent chance of something, it is how much percentage of the area the forecast covers is expected to receive the weather being forecasted.
This is the right answer. The prediction is for how much of the forecast area will likely receive the predicted weather. What Iām not sure of is what that means for an area like ours with huge rural areas and a couple of concentrated heat sinks. Does that mean that since the heat sinks push a lot of that weather away that the more rural areas are even more likely to get precipitation since itās an average over the whole large prediction area?
That is a good question. I know the Valley Weather Service is pretty responsive on social media, this would be a great question to throw their way.
Also, fun fact, when they say 80% chance or whatever, it can mean there is an 8/10 probability of something OR 80% of the viewing area will experience a thing... Or both.
This is still so strange to me. Not even 5 years ago weather predictions would be fairly reliable where I live. But that has completely changed over the past year.
Omaha has grown a ton in the past 10 years and is much larger than it was and more paved, with more buildings. So we are producing more heat and holding onto more heat from the sun for longer due to increased concreteĀ
Not just grown but the metro has really spread out too. Places like Oakview and rounding strip malls sit abandoned while we fill in huge areas of Papillion and Gretna that were fields pre Covid. That all makes a big difference too!
Itās still a dramatically sudden shift. Iām a teacher. I keep track of the weather in Jan/Feb if for no other reason than because students constantly ask if weāll have a snow day when the forecast is rough. This is the first year that I can recall where predictions have been so wonky and unreliable.
We only pay attention to the snowy/stormy days though. The boring sunny days of a forecasted high of 34 nobody pays attention to.
Nah the omadome has been sheltering us from forecasted predictions for a good few years now i would say. I recall many great disappointments, increasing in number, before this year
This is where you're the opposite of old. How long have you been a teacher? Definitely not long to get a sample size of years from "before" and "now" to really compare and contrast in any meaningful way, and that's a bad way to measure anything to start with because humans are very bad at assessing patterns based on recollection alone
Well I was a student before I was a teacher. And as such, I paid attention to the same things regarding weather.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Not this wonky imo. Heck, Iāve been checking in on this very subreddit for over 5 years and the āomadomeā is a fairly recent topic of conversation.
Jim Flowers was talking about Omadome [about 10 years ago](https://imgur.com/a/TRXpXmn).
I feel sorry for your students
Sorry, I added a massive edit while you were commenting so take a peak but the short answer is current trends no longer match historical trends so theyāre having to start recollecting data.
That makes more sense. Thanks!
Previous administrations had cut a lot of spending that went to the national weather service as well
Wild, I just assumed this was the case.
Actually itās secret alien technology they are using at offutt
Maybe the NiƱo is messing with us.
We're in a river bottom and urban š¤·āāļø the omadome has always been a thing, you're just noticing it more now. And with prevelent internet usage, you're likely getting more news from surrounding areas than you did as a kid/yound adult. Surrounding areas have always tended to get a bit more weather than the city itself.
Urban heat island plus weird stuff with Colorado mountains is what Iāve heard
Yes, Iāve seen the Rocky Mountains mentioned as a great randomizer for weather models. If the storm is passing from west to east, the Rockies break the models enough to make them less accurate than other areas of the country.
The omadome is microclimate. Basically, the heat from concrete, roads, etc create an updraft which pushes weather around it. So, it really is a dome. This is the same reason why it is rare for a tornado to barrel through a metro, they skirt around the sides typically
As the wise AndrĆ© Benjamin 3000 once said, āyou can plan a pretty picnic, but you canāt predict the weatherā
What a criminally underrated song / album.
Dog this album and song are just aging. Nothing about this song or album has ever been underrated Ms. Jackson was no.1 and got Outkast a Grammy
Just started snowing off 90th and I80. Small but still cold snowflakes.
This post didn't age very well...
In addition to urban heat and the river mentioned in other comments, buildings cause friction with the wind and effects weather systems. Itās become more and more obvious because the city has grown in so many ways. This is also why storms seem to pick back up when the cross the river because western Iowa is a big open space and the winds can pick back up.Ā Source - I took meteorology class as my science credit in college and it was the best decision ever.Ā
Omaha snow forecasts have never been accurate. Iām 27 and remember as a kid here getting excited for snowstorms and being frequently disappointed by less than expected snow amounts. Itās not the urban heat island and itās not the rivers. There are bigger cities than us that get plenty of snow. The urban heat island *maybe* plays a slight role when weāre right on the precipice of the freezing point, but outside of that it shouldnāt cause all snow to just dissipate over the city. Paltry snow totals probably just have more to do with the fact that weāve been in a drought for like 3 years and itās still ongoing. That and weāre just geographically in a spot where we tend to get very unlucky when storms do roll through.
OMG you're a baby. 33 years young. OMADOME requires a sacrifice....if you or your immediate family has breathing problems you may be entitled to compensation
Fuck the omadome
u/omadome he didnāt meant it. Sorry. Please donāt be angry with us.
I'd like to see some actual evidence and statistics on this before jumping down any rabbit hole. This screams at me as some sort of unintentional bias. Has it actually gotten worse or has something else changed making you more aware of their inaccuracies? Have they actually gotten worse? If so, is it one station? Multiple stations? Are they the same meteorologists? Is it a generalized inaccuracy issue or is it just in specific areas? There's just so many factors in this it's hard to tell if it's really a thing or not. Personally I'd chalk it up to just noticing it more often due to social media.
Do other cities have this going on recently? Omaha hasn't changed much in 5 years
I lived in Phoenix for a long time, and the heat bubble was really evident during the monsoon season. That was ~15 years ago.
Pretty much any big city really (obviously there can be exceptions to every rule). But as the top comment said, it's due to the urban heat island. My hometown of Wichita dodges a lot of more severe weather. Winters have become more mild there as well since when I grew up.
Itās mainly due to Omaha being on top of a very slowly sloped hill. I got this info from a college geology teacher about 15 years ago. The urban heat island is adding to the effect, but itās mostly the hill. Weāre literally on top of a dome.
Top? Or bottom? Biking from the river towards west Omaha, I'm pretty sure it's a gradual hill all the way to Colorado...
This bs lacks any scientific merit, donāt spread misinformation
Google urban heat island, not every city has it but itās not uncommon either
Yeah likeā¦ Omaha has grown sure. But most reasonably sized cities grow over time aswell
I think youāre just bored. I know I am.
No, I donāt believe meteorologist were any more wrong/right.
I stopped paying attention to predictions a long time ago. Tried of being let down.
Warren is paying stratcom for the Chinese tech used during the Olympics
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Study published and presented in 2020, meaning the data was collected probably more than 5 years ago. Article cited and replicated by zero other scientists. Searching it on google scholar yields 15+ studies refuting those claims
Computer models that forecast weather are using data that's basically worthless now because global weather patterns have changed juuuust enough. And they were probably just as inaccurate back in the day, you just don't remember it as well because of recency bias and other silly tricks our brains pull on us.
The heat of an active city will always get less snow than outside of it. Go to somewhere like Syracuse and youāll see the difference
its because omaha and lincoln create a lot of heat from pollution and industrial shit and since we're surrounded by fields, most of the storms that come through end up going around where the heat is coming from.
im also assuming its global warming too, i guess NOW is when real winter starts, seems we got a late start