FORT PAYNE, Ala. (WDEF)- As the holiday travel season ramps up, you may have begun seeing forecasts for snow on your social media feeds.
However, just because someone says that the biggest storm in years is coming, doesn’t make it reality.
Marla Jones, the Public Information Officer for DeKalb County EMA, said that last week, “I had a friend call me and I was making travel plans and she’s like you need to cancel because there’s gonna be 4 feet of snow in Alabama and 8 feet of snow in New York on December 18.”
This interaction prompted her to post this warning about long range forecasts being posted on social media.
These include posts about theoretical snowstorms, severe weather outbreaks, and hurricanes.
They say forecasts hundreds of hours in advance rarely come true, and are concerned about people being complacent due to the storms they see predicted online from these long range models never happening.
Michael Posey, the EMA Director for DeKalb County, says this is particularly concerning in a county that has seen several weather disasters over the past 15 years, including multiple violent tornadoes on April 27, 2011 and more recently the Henagar tornado on May 8, 2024.
He says when storms get forecast and don’t happen, it signals to residents, “It was hyped and nothing happened and they become complacent, which is something we fear because complacency kills people.”
The two most used long range weather models are the GFS from the National Weather Service and the European weather model, which can be accessed on numerous websites.
One example of the GFS that stirred reactions was from Tuesday, November 18, depicting a snowstorm across our area on November 30th, 288 hours away.
This model was shared by some weather social media pages getting thousands of interactions.
The next run of that model six hours later completely erased that theoretical snowstorm.
Chief Meteorologist Austen Onek says that long range weather models past 72 hours are only useful for looking at trends, not predicting specific storms.
He said “Computer modeling for weather forecasting is a lot like looking down the roadway. If you look farther down the roadway, you can tell the difference between compact car and a semi truck. You can’t tell the difference about the semi truck or on the other cars about who’s driving and what color it is, who owns the semi truck, the license plate numbers, things like that you have to wait until those cars and trucks get closer to you. Computer modeling works the same, we have to be closer to the event to get a better idea of what will ultimately happen.”
Dekalb County EMA says that you should have a plan for severe weather, but also don’t overreact to a forecast over 300 hours away.
Jones said, “People don’t need to fall for this and go buy generators and cancel their holiday plans just for that because there’s no way you can predict that far ahead.”
DeKalb County EMA does have their own warning system via text and plans to release a warning app soon.
