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I got wind that WSBT attacked us in their weather blog earlier this week.  So, I checked it out, and they were correct. While not specifically naming WNDU, it was pretty obvious.  :)  They claim that we don’t put much work into our forecast and that their forecast of 50 degrees this past Monday was a perfect forecast.  If you were outside in the zero degree wind chills that day, you know that is laughable.  I do not believe in attacking other stations or meteorologists either on the air or on-line.  I guess that’s my Hoosier upbringing.  However, I do think that I have a right to respond to attacks, especially when they are so far off base.

 This station claims that their forecasted high of 50 degrees for both Sunday and Monday earlier this week was correct, and that everybody else was wrong.  Well, do you believe  a temperature that jumps to around 50 degrees for 4 hours around midnight qualifies as a good forecast?  When we forecast the weather, we are forecasting for the daytime high temperature…not the middle of the night.  We might say rising to 50 at night but the daytime high is what we are forecasting.  So we had a high forecast for Sunday of 45…it hit 46 degrees by 7pm.  We had a forecasted high of 33 for early Monday with falling temperatures.  It was 24 by 6am and fell to 11 with wind chills below zero by noon.  Do you think that a forecast that says a low Sunday night of 26 and a high on Monday of 50 is correct?  To me that is laughable.  Anybody who went outside expecting 50 degree weather on Monday was in for a rude awakening.  To me, our forecast was the correct one.  I find it amazing that somebody would claim to be correct when the thermometer jumps to 53 at midnight and back down to 11 during the day.

 It was also implied that we are lazy and just go with the computer numbers.  I take offense to that.  Anybody who watches my forecast on TV knows that I stray from the computer numbers a lot.  (see my previous blog from a week ago)  In fact the forecast for this entire week on the computers was for highs in the mid to upper 30’s.  WSBT  went with the computer numbers.  The WNDU forecast was for highs in the low to mid 20’s early this week and upper 20’s late in the week.  You know it’s been very cold!  So far, we haven’t had a high above 24 degrees through Wednesday, and it definitely won’t get out of the 20’s on Thursday.  I think we did a great job forecasting what actually happened in the weather this week.

 While nobody is going to be correct all the time at forecasting the weather, I believe that our forecast at WNDU is very good most of the time.  Our loyal viewers know that and continue to watch because of that.  And we will continue to work hard every day to put out the best forecast possible.

 Mike