Fishel saying they busted on the severe storms, and seems aggravated over it and the winter storm bust in January.
WHAT HAPPENED?
From a humanitarian standpoint, I'm thrilled that yesterday's and last night's weather event turned out to be a dud. I don't enjoy seeing people suffer after a severe weather/tornado outbreak. From a professional standpoint, it's very troubling in that credibility is established or destroyed on those relatively few days during the year when the weather is the news. So here we are, about 25% of the way through the year, and we've already had a predicted snowstorm, which for most of us was a joke, and a predicted major severe weather event, which also never materialized. If I wasn't in the field of meteorology, I could easily see why the general public says and thinks the things they do, like "it must be nice to be wrong 90% of the time and still get paid", or "all you guys do is hype the weather for the sake of ratings". I once heard from a critic who told me he only evaluated me on the days I had something to predict. Not fair, but I understand where he was coming from. I could bore you with you an analysis of what went wrong yesterday and last night, and talk about convection to our south blocking the import of moisture, or the lack of surface based instability, or lapse rates in the 700mb-500mb layer of 8ºC/km, or even geopotential height falls of more than 200 meters in a 12 hour period. But I'm not gonna do that
. All I can tell you is that the field of meteorology has made enormous strides over the 37 years I've been a part of it. But we have a long way to go. I'm not honestly sure how much of it is just pure lack of understanding, or perhaps the research and operational forecast communities are not communicating to the degree they should. All I can tell you for sure is that nobody in the WRAL Weather Center hypes anything. in fact, we are so cautious we sometimes frustrate some in the newsroom who suspect we're being too cautious. And I can also assure you that we don't take missed forecasts lightly. I wholeheartedly reject the approach of "oh well, we're human, and everyone makes mistakes". That's pure crap! If you care enough, you dig and dig as deep as you can in order to try and find the reason why you were wrong, and they you apply that newfound knowledge in order not to make that same mistake again. Ok, enough. All of us here consider ourselves scientists as much or more than broadcasters. Science will continue to be our priority. We're trying, God knows we're trying.