Anyone who lives in the Baltimore metro area watches them every day. Today we’ll face chief meteorologists from each local station off against each other. We’ll rank Vytas Reid from WBFF, Tom Tasselmyer from WBAL, Marty Bass from WJZ, and Norm Lewis from WMAR. You like them when they’re right, you hate them when they’re wrong… now lets see where they rank.

The meteorologists were ranked in three categories: delivery, credibility, and personality. An overall score was calculated by averaging the three scores. The scores are on a scale from 1-10, 10 being the best score possible. Without wasting anymore time…

Credibility
I think this is one of the most important categories. It is of great importance for a meteorologist to know what they are talking about when they are delivering their weathercast. Without a weather background, a weather anchor is nothing more than a news anchor doing the weather.

Marty Bass has been at WJZ for a long time, however he doesn’t have a weather degree. Vytas received his certification from Mississippi State after getting his Broadcast Communication degree from Indiana University. Tom is a graduated from North Carolina State with a B.S. in meteorology.

The nod has to go to Norm Lewis though. He got his training through the US Navy and was part of the Hurricane Hunter Squadron. He then went on to work at the National Hurricane Center.

Delivery
Enthusiasm for the weather is important when delivering a weathercast. Nothing is worse than a boring weather report. I don’t care if it’s sunny for the next five days, spruce it up and make it exciting.

Vytas adds some excitement to weathercasts with his personality, however holding back on the 7-day forecast loses some points. It’s probably not even his fault, but ‘teasing’ the 7-day is outdated (at least I think).

Tom Tasselmyer relays a very informative and interesting forecast each night. No matter what the weather, Tom is calm and collected and gives me exactly what I want: a good forecast.

Personality
Being comfortable in front of the camera will let you personality shine through. The audience is able to relate and get to know you even more. It is important for meteorologists to not talk down to their audience. That is something that would be hard to recover from.

Marty is able to show more personality since he is a morning guy. However, his “here, there, and everywhere” personality makes me watch him rather than his forecast.

Vytas shows off his smile each and every time he does a forecast. He allows the audience to step into his life by mentioning his family and friends. You can tell he is a fun guy simply how he acts on camera.

Overall
This was a tough decision. I tried to rate each meteorologist as fair as possible. Norm Lewis barely squeaked past Tom Tasselmyer as Baltimore’s Best Meteorologist.

Now we want to hear what you think.

http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/03/02/global-warming-pause.html

The article is a bit dated (March 2nd, 2009) but I just found it…

“For those who have endured this winter’s frigid temperatures and today’s heavy snowstorm in the Northeast, the concept of global warming may seem, well, almost wishful.”

To the general public that may be true, but climate scientists and really any scientist in general knows that a single storm or strong winter season is hardly indicative of Global climate change. In fact, several years of strong winters is not indicative of some long term, human induced or natural Global Climate change.  There are many potential paramaters that need to be analyzed. Changes in solar output, Changes in Walker circulation flows, etc. We are all familiar with El Nino and La Nina events. El Nino cause a small increase in temperature and La Ninas cause a small decrease in global temperatures.

“But climate is known to be variable — a cold winter, or a few strung together doesn’t mean the planet is cooling. Still, according to a new study in Geophysical Research Letters, global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.”

Climate is not variable in the near term IMHO. It is variable on the long term. We know of cooling and warming episodes in our past. In fact, each time we have an ice age we experience Global Cooling and they have occurred many times throughout Earth’s history. Weather changes from day to day and year to year, but climate should remain relatively stationary over many years. Of course this depends on how fine of a scale we are using to measure it.

“Earth’s climate continues to confound scientists. Following a 30-year trend of warming, global temperatures have flatlined since 2001 despite rising greenhouse gas concentrations, and a heat surplus that should have cranked up the planetary thermostat.

“This is nothing like anything we’ve seen since 1950,” Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee said. “Cooling events since then had firm causes, like eruptions or large-magnitude La Ninas. This current cooling doesn’t have one.”"

Last year had a strong La Nina IIRC and we are in one now as well so some cooling is expected. I had first heard about the current halt in warming in discussions on Eastern Weather Board. Global temperatures seem to be no longer rising as proponents of human induced global warming said they should. The computer models predict very significant increases in Global temperatures due to human activity by the end of this century. 

“Instead, Swanson and colleague Anastasios Tsonis think a series of climate processes have aligned, conspiring to chill the climate. In 1997 and 1998, the tropical Pacific Ocean warmed rapidly in what Swanson called a “super El Nino event.” It sent a shock wave through the oceans and atmosphere, jarring their circulation patterns into unison.

How does this square with temperature records from 2005-2007, by some measurements among the warmest years on record? When added up with the other four years since 2001, Swanson said the overall trend is flat, even though temperatures should have gone up by 0.2 degrees Centigrade (0.36 degrees Fahrenheit) during that time.

The discrepancy gets to the heart of one of the toughest problems in climate science — identifying the difference between natural variability (like the occasional March snowstorm) from human-induced change.”

I think there might be a natural reason for the flatline. We are entering an ice age –>

We should be entering a period of drastic global cooling. Of course the increase in atmospheric CO2 due to human activities has offset this natural cycle but what this shows is that there is a natural means of absorbing atmospheric Co2 concentrations and that global temperatures should begin to cool.

This latest flatline in warming does not mean that human induced warming has not occurred or is not a problem. If we put a lot of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere it is going to get warmer. There is absolutely no question about that. The actual extent of the warming induced by humans is not certain to me, however. 

But I expect a long period of global cooling to begin if it hasn’t started already. Have we pumped so much Co2 into the air that it is going to offset the natural cycle delineated in the picture above? If we have, good for us. We averted an ice age but now would be a good time to go green and slow down our emissions. If we do start seeing strong cooling in the upcoming years I’d recommend pumping more Co02 into the air. Leave your cars running…

Vincent Sapone

Recent data released by NCDC detailed the climate for the winter months (Dec 08 - Feb 09). Among the many things listed were the temperatures and precipitation amounts for that period. There are a few notable facts that are worth mentioning.

January 2009 was a COLD month (at least on the east coast). In fact, it was 3 degrees below average in Baltimore, 3.1 degrees below at JFK in New York, and 4.5 degrees below average in Boston, according to climate reports published by NOAA. One would think with such a large drop from normal that it would be at least mentioned, however this didn’t receive any press from distinguished weather sites.

February was the opposite of January. Above average temperatures dominated most of the month. Along with the temperatures, we experienced a dry February. On average, precip totals were about .6 inches below the norm. New Jersey and Delaware recorded their driest February ever.

What I find remarkable about all of this is the lack of reporting for January and over-reporting for February. Take a look at the site I got the information from. Not only do they fail to mention January’s stats, they sensationalize February’s.

Here’s a look at Accuweather’s blog. For a blog that is specifically for “Global Warming news, science, myths, and articles”, is it convenient that there is no mention of January?

If you are going to use February as an arguement for global warming, I’m going to use January to counter it.

The southern states from Texas through North Carolina (with the exception being Florida) have been experiencing many rainy days through the second week of March. Some places in the deep south have had measurable rainfall for 6 days straight. Below is a seven day long accumulated precipitation map for the U.S.

7 Day accumulated QPF

This will be the last gloomy forecast day for the southern states for the rest of the week. High pressure will be in control of the eastern seaboard and provide a nice stretch of weather until a strong cold front barells its way southeastward through the eastern third of the nation during the day Thursday. The cold front will be accompanied by showers and embedded thunderstorms and will usher in some unseasonably cool air for Friday.

The Pacific Northwest is next in line for the long period of unpleasant weather. Valley rain and mountain snow are the story today and will be for the next few days. The overall pattern heading into the upcoming weekend looks to be troughiness digging into the western states with several impulses riding through, while a large ridge begins to build across the central states supplying sunny skies and above average temperatures for those locations.