First - above are the complete maps for yesterday's summer season outlooks from NOAA-NWS-Climate Prediction Center. If the reader has the interest, and the courage, to learn exactly how to interpret these maps venture off to:
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Second, Chuck Doswell has further commented:
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So this looks more like a gross misinterpretation by the media than a really dumb statement by the NWS? If so, I'm certainly not surprised about that.
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I think that there were stumbles at all three organizations involved in reporting this to the public.
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Climate Prediction Center produces a hard to understand product - check the link above and then think about what percentage of the general public, reporters included, could explain these maps to another person. Note that CPC now has an experimental version online that would outlook just two categories - above and below - and these charts should be more easily understood by general users.
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I think that the local NWS tried to produce a one-size-fits-all briefing rather than considering their three types of local customers (general public, media, and the local climate and weather research community). This generic approach produced a briefing that had problems regardless of which user community members actually hung in there and watched the whole thing. This is just my personal guess.
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The Arizona Star reporter, probably in frustration, wrote his cynical condensation of the briefing content for his online blurb yesterday evening. I suspect that he's caught lots of crap for the early version.
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