For me, I try to pride myself on an accurate forecast. While many don't notice a few degrees difference between my forecasts and the actual, I do. On Saturday night, I made a forecast for moderate lows in the mid teens for many of us, however it was significantly colder this morning when you woke up than what I told you it would be. The good news (for me) was that everyone missed these low temperatures, and it wasn't just me. Regardless, I like to learn from Mother Nature and try to become better each day.
I wanted to take a minute or two to explain just why everyone was so far off on today's morning temperatures. While our computer models serve as a great resource for us to generate our forecasts, they are not infallible. One thing our forecast models did NOT take into account when generating the overnight low forecasts on Saturday was the fresh snowfall that we were getting during the afternoon and evening on Saturday.
Why is this so important? Well, fresh snowfall tends to have a general cooling effect on our temperatures. Overnight, we tend to see much cooler lows, and our afternoon highs are also cooler. On top of the fresh snowfall, our sky cleared much sooner than anticipated. This allowed all of our heat (I use the word "heat" loosely in our Montana winters) from the day to escape into the atmosphere much quicker. The fresh snow, also radiates cooler air at the surface. The combination of heat escaping easier than expected, and the snow sending colder air out led to our -1° low temperature in Bozeman and 5° low in Butte, compared to my forecasts of 18° and 13.°
There is my little weather fact for the day. Have a great rest of the weekend!
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