The weather world is all atwitter about Stormageddon, or Frankenstorm, or what Jalopnik calls “Snor’eastercane,” Hurricane Sandy and the contrasting storm coming from the west to apparently meet somewhere in the Northeast.

The storm doesn’t all have to do with the storm. It’s over the National Weather Service:

The league of extraordinary meteorologists are extraordinarily pissed off at the National Hurricane Center for their pedantic warnings for Frankenstorm Sandy. Specifically, they feel that the NHC’s wonkiness led them to not issue Hurricane and Tropical Storm Warnings when the conditions will be hurricane-like.

Instead, they’re issuing a High Wind Watch, which means nothing to anyone.

Sandy’s called the “Frankenstorm” because it’s currently transitioning from a warm core tropical system to a cold core, hybrid storm. Therefore, issuing a Tropical Storm Warning/Watch or Hurricane Warning/Watch will eventually be technically incorrect since it won’t be a tropical system, but rather a sub-tropical system.

The NHC says they’re worried that people will be confused when, after the storm goes inland, they switch all the later warnings and watchings to High Wind and Coastal Flooding alerts so, with the exception of points offshore, they’re issuing High Wind Watches/Warnings.

The weather warning second-guessers include such names as The Weather Channel’s Bryan Norcross and Jim Cantore, and my favorite severe weather meteorologist, Mike Smith, who posted this early Sunday morning:

The latest barometric pressure associated with Sandy is 960 mb. It is forecast to drop to 937 mb when it is south of NYC. … With a pressure that low the winds and surge could be very comparable to a hurricane. It would be an all-time record low for the region, hurricane or not. 

At the wedding I attended earlier this evening, two residents of D.C. told me they heard the storm was weakening. “I heard it wasn’t going to be a hurricane,” one of them said.

This was a very poor decision by the NWS. I hope it doesn’t end up costing lives due to the perceived lessening of the threat because it “isn’t” a hurricane in bureaucrat-speak.

The irony for us Wisconsinites is that, as of Monday, the word “rain” is nowhere in the forecast until Sunday.

Any second now you may hear some liberal bleating that Stormageddon is the result of global warming. Joe Bastardi has anticipated this in a tweet …

Warmingistas propaganda on Sandy just more lies

… proven with the news that global warming stopped, uh, 16 years ago.

How will this affect the presidential race? (As if that’s a meaningful question.) The Romney campaign bus won’t be available to the campaign, because it’s being used to deliver relief supplies.

Smith passes on quite a message from a meteorologist at the NWS’ Philadelphia office: