Blizzard Questions, Including Why a European Weather Model Excels at U.S. Forecasts

In what has, until now, been a quiet winter in the Northeast, nearly 30 million residents are girding for a blizzard that may end up worthy of the National Weather Service list of historic Major Winter Storms. Winds at sea are predicted to reach hurricane strength.  A yard of snow is possible in parts of New England.

There are many different concerns, ranging from stocking up on water for those on wells in areas vulnerable to power outages (which was once my situation, but no more) to my teenage son’s swift click last night to the Snow Days Calculator website.

There are also plenty of questions.  Here are three that I’m sending to a batch of my favorite extreme-weather watchers (including Marshall Shepherd of the University of Georgia, Cliff Mass at the University of Washington, Ryan Maue at WeatherBell, Andrew Freedman at Mashable, Dave Robinson at Rutgers, Jason Samenow of Capital Weather Gang, Eric Holthaus at Slate and my local go-to guide, Alex Marra of Hudson Valley Weather):

1) Unlike some other past winter nor’easters that were forecast many days in advance, this one seemed to pop abruptly into forecasts only on Saturday. What makes the difference?

2) As with some previous potent winter storms and hurricanes (including Sandy), there’s been a consistent focus on the computer model of the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF, for short) as the best at getting details like snowfall amounts right.  Is that simply a matter of more fine-grained resolution or do you see other factors making their model best at predicting North American storms of this sort?

3) The computer upgrades announced earlier this month by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration seem targeted at closing this gap. Do you see that as a decent prospect, or are there other issues at play, as well?

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