Come on, guys. Is it going to snow or not?

This map shows the amount of predicted snowfall that 

leads to a Weather Advisory for various zones in Alaska.

So, finally after about two months, there is snow in the forecast. That was late morning when the National Weather Service issued a Winter Storm Watch. But by 4 p.m. that had been cancelled in favor of a Winter Weather Advisory, which it might be assumed, means maybe snow.

This map shows the amount of predicted snowfall that 

leads to a Winter Storm Warning.

Over the past 40 years as a mariner and back country traveler, I have watched the quality of weather forecasting improve tremendously, particularly as satellite information came into use and provide a wealth of reliable data that can be applied to what often had been the best guesswork of weather forecasting.

The problem is, with more accurate data comes a refined format for disseminating it. Now there is a series of winter forecast stages, watch, advisories, warnings, storm advisories, storm warnings, blizzard warnings, each with its own definition and separating it for all the others. And in forecasts, the terminology often opens with the most severe warning and most eventually are dialed back to watches or advisories.

The problem is, particularly in Alaska, there are lots of people who haven't experienced a winter yet and so when a storm warning comes up, just like elsewhere people tend to put off travel plans, stock up for a longer than usual stay at home, and then stare out the window looking for the snow that never comes.

I remember about a year ago hesitating about coming in from the East Pole under a storm warning.  Using my old guideline on boats, I "stuck the nose out" with the idea I would turn around if it were that bad. And, coming from the pole, I was carrying a wealth of survival gear including an operational snowmachine in case of problems. Of course it wasn't storming. I ran into a little bit of snow but nothing impassable. After growing up in Western New York with its lake effect snow and then living in Valdez, Alaska, the city in the U.S. which consistently records the deepest annual snowfall, I have found it is seldom that  weather makes it impossible to travel. Usually the most dangerous part of it is other drivers, not anything the weather dumps on us.

So here we are late afternoon on a Saturday on a day that started with a Winter Storm Watch, now reduced to a Winter Weather Advisory and who knows where it goes from here. Rain? Overcast? Sunny and warm? Or does it build back up into that snowstorm they promised earlier in the week?

Part of the problem is confusion over terms. Advisory, watch, warning. At first glance you ask yourself what does that mean.  There are guidelines and plenty of information available but just a casual glance at a forecast, who stops to figure it out? I have an idea to simplify the categories and instead of trying to take quasi-scientific terms to explain things, use common language. I choose these categories: It's going to snow; It might snow; It probably won't snow. How much it is expected to snow doesn't really matter. And in the paragraph that goes along with the warning, the forecast could include more details like how much.

So by those criteria the warning has been reduced from it's going to snow to it might snow. Even as kind of a weather junkie, I'm good with that.

And overnight should tell the tale. Watch this space.

NOAA's Glossary of terms for weather forecasts