Few things get internet trolls pounding on their keyboards quite like a busted weather forecast.

Most forecasts called for 1 to 3 inches of snow during Monday’s morning commute.

There was no Winter Weather Advisory issued by the National Weather Service (whose employees, by the way, had been working 24-7 through the government shutdown). Most forecasts got the timing of Monday’s snow right — smack dab in the middle of Monday’s morning commute — but dramatically under-forecast the amount of snow the Denver area saw. Most of the metro area received 4 to 8 inches of snow, with some localized double-digit totals.

In short, the snow turned Monday’s commute from a nuisance to a disaster.

During the storm, many wondered why the forecast was so far off. The common refrain thrown in meteorologists’ direction during and after a perceived blown forecast is the old “I wish I had a job where I could be wrong 50 percent of the time!” line.

There are plenty of reasons for a wrong forecast, but chief among them: We just aren’t there yet.

Mountain forecasting is significantly more complicated than most other places on the planet, and while meteorology overall has made huge strides over the last few decades, the hyper-local nature of forecasting mountain weather is one of the more elusive challenges still befuddling weather forecasters.

Denver’s location at the base of the Rocky Mountains means we live where a lot of storms begin. In our part of the world, prevailing winds come from the west, meaning a lot of moisture from the Pacific Ocean moves through the western third of the country, but most of it doesn’t directly reach Denver and the Front Range due to drying, downsloping winds. Instead, the remnant energy often turns into a so-called Colorado Low at the base of the Rockies, with the moisture source partially switching from the Pacific to the Gulf of Mexico. But it’s usually where exactly that new area of low pressure sets up that determines how much and what type of precipitation Denver and the Front Range will get.

If you’re forecasting a storm for Chicago, Atlanta or New York, for example, the energy for that storm can be tracked several days out, often starting downwind of the Rockies. It’s not to say forecasting in those cities is particularly easy, either, but Denver’s location at the base of the Rockies makes our weather primarily driven by hyper-localized and short-term weather factors than most other places.

Many of our snow events — including, in part, Monday’s — are caused by what are known as upslope winds. These are winds with an easterly component to them, which force the air to rise as they back against the Rocky Mountains. In Denver, snow usually results from a northeasterly wind. If it’s a due northerly wind, those winds will downslope off of the Cheyenne Ridge to our north and usually result in a light snow event, at best. If the wind is due easterly, there may not be enough cold air to bring us snow.

But if the jet stream gets involved, that can add an extra bit of punch that creates highly localized high-end snow scenarios, such as the one we saw on Monday.

The jet stream, the narrow ribbon of strong winds 30,000 to 40,000 feet up that dictates a lot of our weather, often passes over Colorado. The Rockies force the air to go up and over the mountains, creating an extra burst of energy east of the mountains. When the jet stream is involved in a winter weather event, it often creates narrow bands of exceptionally strong snowfall. It means certain areas, like Denver on Monday, can get walloped with a huge snow event, and places 20 to 30 miles away can see little or no snowfall (Greeley and Loveland didn’t see a single snowflake on Monday).

Finally, you’re probably aware that weather forecasters use guidance from computer forecast models to simulate how weather events may play out. Almost all of those simulations had an inch or less of snow for the Denver area for Monday. The one computer model that accurately showed a higher forecast event, the European model, showed a 3-to-6 inch scenario for Denver. None of the computer models showed what Denver would end up with. In essence, forecasters were flying blind heading into this particular storm.

There’s no doubt about it: We’ve got a long ways to go with mountain forecasting. We aren’t there yet, or even close.

This isn’t meant to be an excuse, either. Weather impacts everyone and everything on a day-to-day basis, and missing a snow forecast by a few inches greatly affects how you go about your day-to-day life. We get it. If there was a magic way to get every forecast right every time, it’d certainly be the weather community’s preference to get it right every time.

But the practical reality of a profession that is tasked with predicting the future is simply this: We got it wrong, and you can bet that we’ll try and do better next time.

Chris Bianchi is a meteorologist for WeatherNation.