Yes, today’s forecast was largely a bust. No bones about it. The model forecasts were predicted on there being breaks in the clouds and enough sunlight to heat up and destabilize the atmosphere, which obviously didn’t happen. But, forecasters thought (as did I) that wind shear at peak levels would compensate for that, and again, that didn’t happen either.

There have been a lot of swings and misses in the last two years from the forecast models, and I lay a lot of blame on this regime gutting NOAA’s budget, laying off hundreds of NOAA employees, defunding weather research, and ordering the military not to share satellite data with NOAA. You can’t have that happen and expect forecast quality not to suffer.