Anonymous wrote:The % they are typically reporting is confidence level. Not chance of rain.
Anonymous wrote:But they do excellent job today explaining what went wrong with their forecast yesterday. Evens out, I guess?
Anonymous wrote:Wtf?? When I checked the weather report a few days ago there was a 70% chance of rain, this am it was 40%. Fast forward a few hours suddenly it's raining, already flooding the roads, our phones are going off with 8 different warnings including tornado warnings telling us to get to shelter immediately, the phones go off again flood warnings, thunderstorms. Why can't the meteorologists around here do their jobs correctly it's one things storms popping up but this happens here all the time and it's getting worse! If anyone disregarded their jobs like this they would be unemployed!!! Never seen such incompetence like this in my life. Then they said oh the weather service was going to issue a flash flood at 5 pm when it was already flooded by 4:15! You can't make this level of incompetence up! It's astounding!!
Anonymous wrote: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.
Anonymous wrote:Anonymous wrote: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.
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.
Anonymous wrote: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.
Anonymous wrote:To get accurate weather reports around here you literally have to watch live radar you can't rely on any of the meteorologists around here because they're idiots.