{"id":144891,"date":"2026-02-25T15:55:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:55:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/144891\/"},"modified":"2026-02-25T15:55:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T15:55:19","slug":"ai-lost-to-traditional-forecasting-models-for-nycs-blizzard","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/144891\/","title":{"rendered":"AI lost to traditional forecasting models for NYC\u2019s blizzard"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) \u2014 Two days before New York’s biggest snowstorm in a decade began, forecasters were still unsure how much snow would fall.\u00a0One traditional US model had consistently predicted a major hit, while newer artificial intelligence\u00a0systems weren’t so certain.<\/p>\n

The long-running\u00a0Global Forecast System, or GFS, signaled the storm would be a whopper for much of the Northeast. Because of lingering skepticism about the GFS\u2019 past performance \u2014 and the fact that it stood alone in predicting massive impacts \u2014 many\u00a0forecasters\u00a0waited<\/a>\u00a0until Friday afternoon before declaring the possibility of more than a foot of snow for parts of New York.<\/p>\n

The totals\u00a0reported<\/a>\u00a0by the US National Weather Service have been staggering: Central Park saw nearly 20 inches, one of its biggest snowstorms on record. On Long Island, snowfall measured at more than two feet.<\/p>\n

Forecasting powerful winter storms is a distinctive challenge, scientists said. Unlike hurricanes, which form at sea and spend days barreling toward land, nor\u2019easter storms often build and strike the East Coast within 24 hours. Providing advance warning for this week\u2019s storm meant forecasting where incoming waves of cold air and moisture would land and interact with\u00a0a streak of low pressure in the jet stream, days in advance.<\/p>\n

So far, AI models haven\u2019t made that task much easier, said Bob Oravec, a senior branch forecaster for the US Weather Prediction Center in Maryland.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no perfect model yet,\u201d Oravec said. \u201cThat\u2019s the problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the US, storm warnings and alerts are issued by the National Weather Service and redistributed by commercial forecasters. A local office in Upton, New York, was responsible for safety advisories spanning New York City and parts of\u00a0New Jersey and Connecticut. Forecaster David Stark said\u00a0staff waited to issue the first alerts until Friday due to lingering uncertainty about the storm\u2019s path.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don’t like to put out warnings early and give a false sense of alarm if it’s not needed,\u201d Stark said.<\/p>\n

While the GFS \u2013 developed by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a federal science agency \u2013 was ultimately correct about the storm\u2019s impacts on New York City, scientists said it overstated the threat in parts of the Mid-Atlantic and was slightly off on the storm\u2019s duration.<\/p>\n

Those mixed results are\u00a0giving forecasters pause as the GFS now sees the possibility of another significant storm early next week.<\/p>\n

At times, the GFS has predicted heavy wintry precipitation in the Northeast beginning early next week. A similar signal has been picked up by a traditional European forecast model, which is generally considered the best of its kind. But as of Tuesday morning, a powerful new European AI model sees a lower threat.<\/p>\n

Though the models may continue to shift in the coming days, Columbia Climate School researcher\u00a0Andrew Kruczkiewicz<\/a>\u00a0said he\u2019s watching how forecasters prioritize AI predictions before warning the public about incoming storms.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re so trained to think anything AI is better,\u201d said Kruczkiewicz. \u201cEven if models are considered better or high quality, decision-making is not necessarily simplified.\u201d<\/p>\n

More stories available on bloomberg.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (BLOOMBERG) \u2014 Two days before New York’s biggest snowstorm in a decade began, forecasters were still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":144892,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[9,24,63,134,136,135],"class_list":["post-144891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-staten-island","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-staten-island","tag-staten-island-headlines","tag-staten-island-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=144891"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/144891\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/144892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=144891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=144891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=144891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}