The first time I saw the term, “snowquester,” was in the Washington Post. This morning, it is the theme of news channels and weather reports. It makes little sense to combine the two except that the “Post” linked it to the possibly reduction of federally contracted weather analysts.
One channel today, has a guy in a robot mobile broadcast studio riding the highways in the storm. He stopped at various places along the route to illustrate the depth of the snow as he increased elevation through the Maryland and Virginia countryside.
Watching his wiper blades while driving down the road was like being a passenger in a white knuckle snow storm, only you didn’t have to worry about the traffic, snow, and slush. Why is it that when I see a Subway sign while driving, I always feel like stopping for a sandwich no matter what time of day it is?
Anyway, sequester has been combined with snow to create a phenomenon in the DC Metro today where many people will be "working" from home.
“Snow is hard,” says Joel Achenbach. Sequestration may be hard, but no one knows for sure until it accumulates. That’s the political angle.
“Snowquester imminent, but snow is the hard stuff for forecasters
By Joel Achenbach, Published: March 5
Snow is hard. This is a fact of meteorological life.
A forecaster trying to predict snowfall has to track many variables: the amount of precipitation, the intensity of precipitation, the air temperature, the surface temperature, the atmospheric structure, the timing of everything, the migration of the rain/snow line, and so on.
Any mistake is exaggerated by the very nature of snow, the way an inch of rain gets multiplied into 10 inches of white stuff (or six heavy inches, or 15 or 20 or even 30 powdery inches, depending on the snow’s wetness – another variable!).
Snow exposes failure. If the weatherperson botches a rainfall prediction, no one notices, because it’s hard for an ordinary person to judge rainfall totals, and the storm sewers gobble up the excess. But someone can detect a bad snow forecast — too much snow, or too little — just by looking out the window.
“With winter storms, the devil’s always in the details,” said Christopher Vaccaro, spokesman for the National Weather Service."
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