Forecasting Style and Accuracy
Bastardi prefers definite, rather than probabilistic, predictions: "The weather an opponent that never quits, and the best you really can get is a tie with it." He is critical of National Weather Service forecasts:
Look at this: TONIGHT...MOSTLY CLOUDY. SNOW LIKELY THIS EVENING...THEN A CHANCE OF SNOW AFTER MIDNIGHT. TOTAL ACCUMULATION AROUND AN INCH. BRISK WITH LOWS IN THE MID 20S. NORTH WINDS 10 TO 20 MPH WITH GUSTS UP TO 30 MPH. CHANCE OF SNOW 70 PERCENT. I continue to marvel at NOAA forecasts. Does anyone in the NWSFO understand they put out forecasts that make no sense? Why not at least make sense? Now I do have a disagreement with them as to snow totals, for instance at the Jersey Shore where I think they wind up closer to 3 than 1, but that is not my problem. My problem is the darn forecast says they will get an inch, that it is a fact that there will be an inch, but then has SNOW LIKELY THIS EVENING. How the heck can it only be likely? It has to snow to accumulate an inch, doesn't it? How is there a 70% chance of snow, but you say it will accumulate an inch? How can it accumulate an inch, if there is a chance it doesn't fall (30%)? —Joe Bastardi, Accuweather.com Professional, December 5, 2007He thinks private companies make more accurate forecasts than the government, and he bases this on reports he and his associates have prepared.
Bastardi and colleague Joe D'Aleo were among the first meteorologists to correctly forecast the Halloween nor'easter of 2011, with Bastardi making an early forecast of the storm as early as October 25
In October 2012, Bastardi correctly predicted as early as October 22 that Hurricane Sandy would form in the western Caribbean and make landfall on the Jersey Shore, over a full week before Sandy made landfall on October 30. He was consistent with his forecast despite the constant changes in forecasts from weather models and other meteorologists claiming that his idea of a Jersey landfall would fail to come to fruition.
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