When Forecasting Goes Bad

Raleigh, North Carolina was incapcitated by an unpredicted inch of snow this past week. People were stranded on the roads, at schools, and in other buildings because the salt trucks did not get out on the roads before they iced over. People then proceeded to put the blame for all of the havoc that ensued on the meteorologists, none of which had predicted the snowfall. People have come to rely on meteorologists almost too much instead of being prepared for whatever nature throws at them. Meteorology is still a science with a lot of unanswered questions, especially in the area of winter storms, but people expect the forcast to be correct every single time, and do not give any slack when the actual weather does not match up with the forecast. Just a hundred years ago, there was no weatherman on television to tell people what to expect. We have become spoiled without realizing it, and are unforgiving, even though the scientists try to do the best they can with what knowledge that they have. Was it anyone's fault that people were stranded all over Raleigh? I do not know, but we should not be so quick to place all of the blame on the weather forecasters and their still developing science.