Steve, I respectfully disagree with your take on mountain-forecasts, although I've not followed them closely for Whitney. I've mainly used mountain-forecast in the winter time in NorCal and I've been happy with their info. I can't speak for the other 11,200 mountains they forecast, but I've found them to be worth including in my forecast information, together with avalanche reports, NOAA, accuweather, weatherunderground, Howard Sheckter, and even local TV news. There is no single forecast site that is always the best on all occasions.
I suspect that the highly precise reporting of mountain-forecast tends to make people confuse precision with accuracy. The reader needs to consider the precise numbers to be in the center of a range of accuracy. When you look at it that way, predicting 3.9" is not all that different than "snow showers." How many inches is a "shower" and is there a practical impact to me if its 2" or 3.9" ? Not really, I can deal 2" or 3.9" the same. By looking at multiple forecasts (from other computer models) one can get a sense of what that range might be around the 3.9," and a sense of what probability it has. In fact, it's just fine if a site is consistently overpredicting or underpredicting, a consistent bias is very helpful on its own. Just include that bias in your assessment together with the other sources.
