The forecast was for 2-4" of rain over a large portion of eastern PA and NJ, accompanied by 20-30mph winds for Thursday night through Saturday morning.  What most of us saw was about .50" or rain, no wind and rather muggy conditions a far cry from the armagedon some of the "trusted" models predicted.  (and yes I am anticipating some of you to claim you got 16" of rain on your driveway, so therefore the models were dead on....)  One of the easiest ways for someone to lose all credibility this time of year is to trust the models.  Even the most average of "joes" can tell you that the models begin having difficulty around this time of the year, and especially later on in October when the summer season transitions to fall and winter.  I remember last year the GFS depicted a blizzard for the east coast around Decemeber 11th, which turned out to be one of may insiginificant rain storms we got last year.  
     Another aspect that threw many of the models off was the caused by the blatant disregard for weather reporting the nation hurricane center pulled this week.  The "storm" was most likely tropical in nature, but the hurricane center pulled the wool over their own eyes and convinced not only themselves but the public that the storm was nothing more than a mere nor'easter, when in fact Kyle had made landfall .  Last time I checked, nor'easterns move north, not west and do not die while over land.  Due to the fact that the models were also confused as to what this storm was, they took it as a nor'easter and moved it up the coast which would have given us the wind driven rainstorm we all were anticipating.  Instead tropicla storm Kyle did what tropical storms tend to do, move west and hit land.  What should be tropical storm Laura is now moving north as well, but should stay far enough away to only cause a few showers here and there today before bringing heavier rain well north of the area.  This was yet another storm the models could handle well, but thats for another day.
      The models this time of year can drive people nuts.  But if one takes a step back and a breath here and there they can walk through the maze of mirrors and make an accurate forecast like many do on this site.  And for the record, I will peddle a bicycle to the moon and back if the GFS and other models correctly predict a snowfall type nor'easter for this area before Decemeber 25th.

JW