i don’t know if this is a nationwide trend among meteorologists, but twice already here in STL i have heard one of our local weathercasters use a new term to describe how they are forecasting a possible winter storm.
the term is "nowcasting"
i don’t think it takes a genius to figure out what this means – "We don’t know what is going to happen, so we are just going to look out the window and tell you what it is doing"
So in spite of the obvious attempt at obfuscation towards the viewing audience, rest assured, that whenever your local weather team shifts into a "nowcasting" situation that you are hearing a much more accurate weather assesment than you can ever get from all the fancy doppler radars and 5 day forecasts.