Tim Ball is conspiratorially lost in the blizzards of 2015 and 2016

Not content with denying climate change, now WUWT is denying the weather. I noticed this claim about storm Jonas at WUWT today, which the meteorologist (ret'd) missed. Tim Ball is claiming that Jonas forecasts failed (archived here). In his article he weaves a conspiracy theory of mammoth proportions, ticking the boxes of six of the seven criteria for conspiracy ideation. This includes twisting the facts to fit his conspiracy theory. It also requires Tim to refer to a 12 month old article about last year's blizzard as proof that the this year's blizzard didn't happen - or something. Wrong storm, wrong year - Tim got his blizzards mixed up.

An overview of storm Jonas

Before beginning on Tim's wildly imaginative conspiracy theorising, here's a short recap of storm Jonas.

Storm Jonas was the fourth most severe storm in the region in at least the past 66 years. Early warnings began more than a week before the storm was forecast to hit, giving people plenty of time to prepare. All the weather models were in general agreement, unusually for a storm like this. The forecasts were remarkably accurate. The dump of snow on New York city was a bigger than expected but otherwise the weather forecasts were pretty well spot on. The storm killed 55 people, caused a storm surge as big or maybe bigger than Hurricane Sandy, dumped record snow in some built up areas, shut down activity in some of the busiest parts of the USA, and resulted in more than $2 billion damage.

I've added more detail below, as well as in the references at the bottom of this article.

It's the snow not the cold, Eric Worrall

Eric Worrall takes over the reins of WUWT when Anthony is away, which has been a lot lately. Today he's shown that he doesn't understand the first thing about climate change. He wrote a short article with the headline: "If it is Hot, it is Climate, if it is Cold, its Climate".

What he's talking about is the stormy weather that hit the USA in the past few days, with crippling dumps of snow. As I speculated earlier, this was most probably fueled by the anomalously warm sea as seen in this image from NOAA. :

More wild weather for the USA

A couple of days ago I mentioned the big storm that was threatening the east of the USA. At the time, most weather forecasters were giving a cautious warning, saying it was a bit soon to know for sure when and whether it would hit. However Bob Henson wrote at wunderground.com: "computer models were in remarkable agreement late Tuesday". Today he wrote:

Everything from tornadoes to paralyzing ice to blizzard conditions will be unfolding over the next several days as a massive storm system, dubbed Winter Storm Jonas by the Weather Channel, takes shape over the eastern half of the United States. Computer models have doggedly pointed to this scenario for the better part of a week, and the model consensus on the big picture continues to be unusually strong. The crosshairs for the heaviest urban snow appear to be on the Washington, D.C., area; more than two feet are possible there and nearby. Blizzard warnings were in effect Thursday afternoon in and near the Washington, D.C., area. The crystal ball is cloudier on where the storm’s north edge will end up--and that location is crucial, since it could be near New York City.