BY PETER BRONSON
The Cincinnati Enquirer
The National Weather Service was making exceptionally fine weather the day I visited them in Wilmington: a Kentucky-blue, cloudless sky, breezes as warm as bathwater and the kind of miracle-cure sunshine that can turn drab khaki meadows into brilliant emerald faster than you can say "first day of spring."
"We're not in production, just sales and marketing," joked Meteorologist in Charge Ken Haydu. He was being too modest.
The weather watchers who work around the clock in Wilmington deserve all the credit they can get for gorgeous days, because they get more blame than they deserve when the sky turns rancid.
For every "Special Reserve Day" from their premium collection of vintage weather -- like Reds Opening Day -- there is a factory-reject lemon that makes phones ring like fire-alarms, with a flash flood of consumer complaints.
Like Feb. 5, 1998.
"My feeling is, absolutely, we blew the forecast," said Mr. Haydu. "Nobody feels worse about it than we do." I could tell he meant it.
"If that storm had occurred in the daytime, we'd come out smelling like a rose. But how do you wake people up in the middle of the night and tell them the forecast models have changed?"
When Cincinnati locked up and turned out the lights after 11 p.m. on Feb. 4, there was a chance of snow. The next morning, there was a chance of mistaking Cincinnati for Siberia. Nearly 18 inches of snow piled up -- an all-time record.
And all the weather forecasts missed it.
"Remember, 18 inches of snow is only 1.8 inches of liquid water," Mr. Haydu said.
"The main storm system was off the South Carolina Coast," said John DiStefano, science and operations officer. "We've never seen a snow storm with a system on the other side of the mountain." But they seemed unconvinced by their own explanations. The "mets" (meteorologists) at the National Weather Service are not TV weatherguys whose heads are 40 percent hair spray. They're pros. Certified scientists. They know that even with a Doppler radar as big as Godzilla's soccer ball, even with computers that can "see" inside storms as far away as Chicago, predicting the weather is still an inexact science.
They hate missing a forecast because their work is as serious as a tornado siren. And we should be glad they feel that way.
About 20 meteorologists and technicians work around the clock watching an area that covers 56 counties, from the Michigan line to Northern Kentucky and parts of Indiana. They are all that stands between us and a sudden disaster with no warning.
Imagine sticking your head out a car window at 55 mph. Now double the speed to 110 mph -- and that's a "weak" tornado. Those make up 70 percent of all tornadoes, but less than 5 percent of tornado deaths. Now stick your head out a jet plane at 200 mph. That's a "strong" tornado, which accounts for 29 percent of all tornadoes and 25 percent of tornado deaths.
A "violent" tornado only accounts for 1 percent of tornadoes, but 70 percent of tornado deaths. It can reach 300 mph and can stay on the ground an hour.
"If it finds a city or town, you have a real problem," Mr. Haydu said. "The worst case would be one of those hitting an urban area like downtown Cincinnati."
Flash floods kill more people than any other weather risk. Lightning, which is hotter than the surface of the sun, does its share. But most of us hear of the National Weather Service when the television starts beeping like a truck in reverse, to announce a severe storm warning. "We tend to over-warn a little bit," Mr. Haydu said. And the rest of us tend to under-react a lot, so it balances out.
So does the weather, Mr. DiStefano said. "Think of it as a fluid." Or think of it as a humongous math problem. "It takes 39 trillion calculations for a 48-hour forecast for all of North America," said hydrometeorologist Jim Noel. And if highs and lows don't add up on the evening news, blame El Nino.
Mr. Noel tried to explain it to me. "Most people think El Nino is a storm. What it is, is a warming of the Pacific Ocean."
The "warm spot" is bigger than the United States, more than 5,000 miles across, pushed out of place by a natural cycle of wind patterns, pushing heat into the atmosphere that "enhances" storms and causes warming, floods, rain, drought and weird weather all over the world.
It gave us the fifth warmest winter on record in Cincinnati. And El Nino ("little boy") could be followed by La Nina ("little girl") -- cold water and cold weather.
I just wanted to know what to expect this summer. So Mr. Noel gave me the perfect forecast for an imperfect science: "Increased variability."
Can't miss with that.
Peter Bronson is editorial page editor of The Enquirer. If you have questions or comments, call 768-8301, or write to 312 Elm Street, Cincinnati, Ohio 45202.
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