DisastersNew York wants its own weather detection service

In the face of recent devastating snowfall in some regions, Governor Andrew Cuomo has announced that the state government will remain committed to its plans for the New York Advanced Weather Detective System, a state-run and focused weather service and alert system.

As the Buffalo News reports, lake effect snowfall blanketed much of Erie County with up seven or more feet of snow in a matter of seventy-two hours. Amidst this, the National Weather Service continually ramped up its storm warnings — much to the frustration of some in the area.

Many Erie County officials publicly claimed that the forecasts “failed to project the ferocity and exact locations of the tandem [storms].”

Erie County Executive Mark Polocarz added that “had county officials known there was any chance for 70 or more inches falling across parts of the county, its preparation would have been different.”

“It is not that the National Weather Service failed us,” Cuomo said, perhaps attempting to leverage a compromise, “It’s that the National Weather Service has a certain number of weather stations and they get that information from those weather stations. And, they perform the best they can with the information they have.”

The plans for the new state-run weather service began after Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee hit the state in 2011, followed by the very damaging Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Using roughly 100 weather stations across the state, the aim is for a more accurate picture of the region’s weather patterns.

“So, when the wind starts to pick up, when the rain starts to fall, you can detect it very early in the pattern’s development and then you can track its trajectory of that weather pattern, which would obviously give you more data, would give you more information, which would be more reliable,” said Cuomo.

The National Weather Service was surprised by the governor’s comments and the frustrations of officials in Erie County.

“We were caught by surprise by those comments,” said Christopher Vaccaro, a weather service spokesman, “This was a very well-forecasted event. We’ve been quite forthcoming and quite accurate in terms of what people in the Buffalo area could expect was coming.”

The Buffalo branch of the National Weather Service declined to comment.

Regardless, while no timetable has been officially established state officials said that FEMA funding from the aftermath of Superstorm Sandy would pay for the new weather system, and that $15 million was approved in the state budget for 2014-15.