I’ve been following The Weather Channel and News12 Traffic and Weather snow forecasts for the nor’easter about to hit NYC and central New Jersey. TWC has been predicting 12-18 inches while News12 has been saying 6-10. I thought that their totals would converge over the day, but they are still that wide apart. Why would they be so different? Don’t they all use the same models? I suspect that TWC has a bigger interest in jacking up the totals for more viewership, but we’ll see.
Ratings. “Snowpocalypse” sells better than “light dusting”.
Same with the ski resorts around here. They all over report by a magnitude of 2x or 3x, except Heavenly, which is pretty accurate.
Mad River Glen, VT takes the prize. A few years ago one of their snow reports was, and I’m quoting it entirely, “The bar opens at 11:00.”
Growing up in Wisconsin, I lived through decades of random forecasts, followed by even more random snow totals.
Luckily, we usually get less than the news guy says. But people are stocking up on ramen and beer because “seven to twelve inches” is on its way. When it turns out to be 5" up north and 3" “for most of our viewing area”, we’re relieved.
May the east coast get to say “Huh, not as bad as everyone thought”
At least it’s accurate and useful. 
Exactly. And lately it seems like schools in Wisco are suddenly oblivious to this trend.
My kid has had her school cancelled the night before (when there was nary a flake in the sky) twice this winter. Both times, the snow was totally manageable.
My rule of thumb:
Take the lower end of the range given in the forecast.
Divide it by two.
That’s about what you should expect.
(Not always. We were told 6"-10" today and not a flake fell.)
Noaa.gov is saying 4-8" for Middletown, NJ so I’d bet the under on your tv channel numbers
Weather is now on the 24hr news cycle, so in order to make it interesting they seem to prefer sensationalizing the worst case scenario. Its only in the last few years your average storm started getting names.
No, they don’t all use the same model. More and more, the weathercast you see is created in-house, by metgeorolgists who often say their personal opinion differs from the model.
There are certainly different models, and sometimes our forecaster will show both. Like I know for certain the local news (with Tom Skilling) will sometimes give the forecasts of the American model (known by some initials, I think), and the European model, and sometimes they can diverge wildly. There was a recent snowstorm where the local model was showing 2"-4" and the Euro model had something like 6"-12" in our area. This time, the local model was correct.
Weather nerd here. 
There are a couple of factors going on here:
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As jtur88 and pulykamell note, there are a lot of different predictive models that meteorologists (even those at the National Weather Service) use. Sometimes the models are in strong agreement, and sometimes they aren’t; in the latter case, the meteorologist has to make a judgement call on which model(s) he or she feels are most likely to be giving an accurate forecast. And, very likely, some of them are better at making those judgement calls than others.
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Generally speaking, it seems that most broadcast meteorologists will err on the side of caution (i.e., predicting higher levels of snow), because the downside of being wrong on the high side (i.e., the storm isn’t as bad as predicted / not as much snow as predicted) is seen as being less problematic than the downside of being wrong on the low side (i.e., the storm is worse than predicted). In the former case, people overprepare, and schools and businesses close when they don’t need to; in the latter case, people are caught unprepared, and injuries and even deaths might result. That said, meteorologists may be creating a “boy that cried wolf” effect, by generating too many forecasts of big snowstorms that don’t materialize.
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Yes, there are TV forecasters who seem to be sensationalizing extreme weather in general (not just snowstorms), apparently in pursuit of ratings. IMO, The Weather Channel has become fairly terrible about this over the past decade or so; I’m sure that the ratings that they get turning tropical storms is what led them to start naming winter storms (and, thankfully, that idea hasn’t caught on beyond them).
Sorry, that was a bad typo. It should have been “during tropical storms.” Not even Jim Cantore is capable of turning a tropical storm.
Watch your local channels. They are trying to be accurate. All The Weather Channel is good for is sensational headlines and occasional good video.
I did end up getting 12 inches of snow… on my car and deck. And 8 inches on my grass and maybe 3 to 4 on the street. The local cable channel definitely won this one.
I’d been a fan of TWC ever since it launched, but, for the reasons already listed, as well as the fact that their TV feed default is now sensationalistic weather porn reality TV programming, I don’t watch them much anymore. These days, the only things I use them for is (a) their very good radar function on their web site, and (b) live coverage for actual severe weather outbreaks.
Otherwise, I rely on Weather.gov (the National Weather Service’s site), and Weatherbug.