Forecaster Joe Bastardi: Fizzled Blizzard? Not Quite

Yes, snowstorm Juno pulled a head fake on New Yorkers, and, yes the city got bamboozled by "meteorological media hype," but weatherman Joe Bastardi told Newsmax TV on Wednesday that far more of the Northeast got just what the eye-popping predictions promised — and more snow is coming.

Bastardi, chief forecaster at the private firm WeatherBELL Analytics, told "MidPoint" host Ed Berliner that 90 percent of the blizzard area stretching from New Jersey to Maine "got what was forecasted" — just not New York City, which pre-emptively closed streets, schools and subways.

Story continues below video.

Note: Watch Newsmax TV now on DIRECTV Ch. 349 and DISH Ch. 223
Get Newsmax TV on your cable system – Click Here Now

He said the abject apology tweeted out afterward by a highly regarded meteorologist — one of the heroes of Hurricane Sandy, in fact — just shows "what the weather will do to you."

My deepest apologies to many key decision makers and so many members of the general public.
— Gary Szatkowski (@GarySzatkowski) January 27, 2015

Bastardi credited Gary Szatkowski of the National Weather Service office in Mount Holly, N.J., with having both high professional standards and humility — "I don't know if I would have done it," he said — but he called the apology debate a sideshow.

He diagnosed a bigger problem: "I think there's a meteorological media hype industry."

"Drive people to the site. Do this, do that," he said, alluding to CNN anchor Don Lemon's roundly ridiculed "Blizzardmobile," plus the endless on-air live weather summits featuring half a newsroom.

"My dad's a meteorologist and he said, 'I can't watch it anymore — three people discussing a line of showers coming through at rush hour, or something like that,' " said Bastardi.

"It's maddening," he agreed.

"But if it generates money for them, they're going to go do that," he said of news organizations.

Bastardi also said New York shouldn't cheer its good fortune too quickly.

"Watch what starts happening now: There's one [snowstorm] coming after another," he said. "And here's what happens, folks: You guys get six, seven inches of snow on the ground. … Three [more] inches fall, another three inches fall, another three inches fall.

"What happens is each of those storms looks like a new storm piling up snow on top of it," he said. "So you may get to a pretty cumulative high total that's going to stress people in those particular areas."

"You guys are going to get brutally cold, also," Bastardi, based in Pennsylvania, warned New Yorkers, adding, "and then your weather forecasters will be on the line."