Cleveland... Worst Weather City?

A lot is being made in the city of Cleveland about how Forbes magazine has been wailing on us lately. Among the negative headlines the city has received from the magazine are things such as the city with the "most miserable people", and the "worst winter weather". There are others too, but those are the first 2 that come to mind, and I got to say, I don't know what Forbes's problem is. Its really not as bad here as people make it out to be. And well, I'm here tonight to debunk one of these ratings that Cleveland's been given. That is, the dishonor of being called the "worst winter weather city".
First of all, the basis for the ratings is just plain foolish. Forbes took 3 things into account when making their list of the top 10 worst weather cities. They are: average annual temperature, average precipitation, and average snowfall. All 3 of these have their problems. First, average annual temperature is misleading. The study is supposed to be about WINTER weather. Why are they using temperature values from all year around? Why didn't Forbes take average temperatures from say... December-March? Wouldn't that make more sense. Not to mention, averages tend to be misleading anyway due to outliers that could spike averages. A city with really hot summers yet still cold winters would have an unfair and irrelevant advantage over other cities. Average precipitation and snowfall confuse me in this study as well. Snowfall IS precipitation. However, many cities, Cleveland included, are marked as having MORE snowfall than precipitation. It makes no sense. Precipitation is rain, snow, sleet, and hail. How can one have more inches of just snow, than snow, rain, sleet, and hail combined? So did Forbes mean rain specifically as precipitation? It would be nice if they explained. And if they did mean rain, how is that relevant to winter? If anything I would take rain in the winter, but most winter weather cities have SNOW, not rain. That's the beef I have with those statistics.
Furthermore, it looks like Forbes just kinda put a bunch of cities in random order to come up with their final list. I mean, nothing in Cleveland's numbers, except the highest snowfall total (which I really doubt compared to Minneapolis) were that bad, and Boston which was # 2, in my opinion had much better numbers than New York at # 3. It just didn't make much sense to me.
Upon a little further review I found that Forbes really did allow other parts of the year, outside of winter, to account for its list. That's why Minneapolis isn't in the top 5, because they have a dry, warm summer. So even though they have the coldest average winter and 3rd most snow (supposedly), they aren't in the top 5 for worst WINTER weather, because of their summer weather. That makes a lot of sense (sarcasm).
I have one last beef with the list. Where the heck is Buffalo, New York? Maybe its not one of the 50 biggest cities that Forbes studied, but if it is, there is no reason it wouldn't be in the top 3 easily. They get more lake effect snow than Cleveland does (its got to do with the wind patterns and stuff), and have it just as cold. They're constantly buried in snow. Their absence is incredibly conspicuous, and perhaps hard to explain.
So take it or leave it, whether it be my gripes or the actual list. I've said all I can. I wouldn't take that much stake into these lists Forbes makes anymore. I'm finding their ways quite unreliable, and I mean, how many people actually read Forbes magazine nowadays anyway? I couldn't tell you.