Reply to Why can't meteorologists do their job around here????!!!!!!

Forum Index » Environment, Weather, and Green Living

Reply to "Why can't meteorologists do their job around here????!!!!!!"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Hi, actual meteorologist here, but not currently in the forecasting business.

There is simply no way to accurately forecast from days to hours out whether a storm will hit your neighborhood.  There may never be.  The atmosphere is beyond complex.  The best that can be done is to say that the conditions are right for storms in a particular region.

As far as today’s forecast, they got it right.  There was a relatively high chance at storms and the NWS had a Flash Flood watch out from early in the day.  But, it didn’t hit everybody.  It barely dripped in north Tysons.  Does that mean it is a failed forecast there?

People also misinterpret the forecast percentages.  Again, this is all based on conditions and stochasticness .  A 40% chance of rain means that if conditions were equal, your location would get rain on 4 out of 10 days.  It is a probability measure.

They did a good job today.  [/quote]

Not quite, 40% means that in a region with area A, over D similar days, an average (arithmetic.mean) of 40% of the region would get wet each day, averaged over many days. [/quote]

Probability of Precipitation (POP) is a point measurement. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics