You may have heard that there's a Thanksgiving storm that could mess up holiday travel and also bring smiles to Northeast skiers and riders. Some hopped on this when by a fluke both major models signaled a coastal storm 9 days ahead of impacts, and some are continuing their hype.
Here's a rule of thumb that I generally use for forecasting winter storms; if something looks perfect for a monster storm 9 days out, it probably isn't going to happen like it is shown because things are going to shift in a big ways the majority of the time over that period. Think about it this way, if a model is off 1 mph on the forward progression of one element that forms the storm 7 days out, that's 168 miles, and that's just one of the moving pieces. 168 miles is enough for two elements to miss coming together optimally at the right time for cyclogenesis in the East. Now that doesn't mean storms don't happen most of the time when you see them 9 days out in the models, rather it means that elements of a storm may be present, but how it forms, how it tracks, and how strong it is are definitely open questions.
Unfortunately hype works really really well on the internets so you simply need to find trustworthy sources, and I assure you that none of them are the ones sharing snowfall maps 9 days out and using apocalyptic language outside of major weather disasters like hurricanes.
