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Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

theatlantic.com

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Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#81

Post by brootstrap »

Just a little knowledge to drop, as a bachelor degree meteorologist and also coder / HN'er.

Dont use your built in phone app for forecasts. Dont expect hour by hour precision (maybe for the next few hours sure, but not 2,3,4,5 days out). Trust nobody expect the trained professionals at NWS. These people look at ALL the models, they watch things like a hawk. I work with some of these nerds and it's crazy. They are like 'oh jimbob did you see the latest GFS kicking out the low up into canada? oh yeah doug that is crazy, but the euro says blah blah and NAM says blahblah... Their job is to literally make a forecast, for the same area, every day. Some people do it for years and years! Think of the experience, wisdom, little tricks and tips etc. Just go to weather.gov, look at it for 2 minutes. Read the foreacst discussion if you want to get your details.

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#82

Post by brootstrap »

littleredstar wrote: post #79

As an amateur astronomer/astrophotographer for the past 25+ years I've relied on long to short term forecasts. Will it be clear for an event I want to see? I can certainly agree the models have improved and are pretty good. Much to my dislike on occasion such as the recent lunar eclipse. I was clouded out, that looked likely days ahead of time. One has to appreciate the complexity of modeling such a large and dynamic…

The system is complex beyond our comprehension. If we really wanted to model weather and climate better we need to know more things. Things like how much cow farts are there? I would be happy to build a system to ingest cow fart obs and feed them into the numerical models. FPS farts per sec yo

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#83

Post by bainsfather »

brootstrap wrote: post #75
grawprog wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked outside every day for 4 years at least. Weather forecasts are so unreliable I stopped listening. I had better luck trying to figure out if i'd need rain gear in a day by just waking up and looking out the window in the morning than looking up or listening to a weather forecast. You really start to notice how wrong they are when you spend every day outside. I don't notice any more working inside again. But wh…

Hmmm. If you are needing down to the minute accurate timing of when rain is going to start & stop, sure nobody can predict that, for every location in the USA, all the time. I have to question where you are getting your weather forecast information??? I am a bachelor degree meteorologist, I dont use any apps that try to be 'hyper local' (omg i hate that word, it is the weather version of AI/ML hype). Just go to the g…

Hi brootstrap, since you're a specialist in this field, I'd be interested in your views...

here in the uk, I am often interested in whether or not it will rain in e.g. a 3 hour, 6 hour or 12 hour period. Either because I am going rock climbing, laying concrete, spraying weedkiller, painting outdoors, etc etc. Often this is very important (not just - 'oh, if only I took an umbrella today').

I have a strong impression that the ability of the uk's met office to forecast this is very poor, such that is only just worth consulting their forecasts. OK, sometimes we have settled weather and forecasting is easy (in these cases, looking towards the prevailing wind is also good). But in most cases the weather changes several times a day and the forecasts are poor. This can also be seen by e.g. checking how the forecast for a specific day changes as the day gets nearer - every day you look, it tends to have changed markedly. Also, the uk met office and norwegian met office (significantly better than the uk one, but still not so good) generally disagree with each other.

I really cannot square my 10+ years of 'studying' weather forecasts and the weather with what you are saying (in the case of the uk (pennine hills of northern England)). And 'stunningly accurate' is just a bad joke.

I presume that precipitation is somehow hard to model, compared to windspeed/pressure/temperature (which seem to be forecast more accurately, though I care about them much less)?

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#84

Post by nabla9 »

> Meteorologists are increasingly uniting weather models and climate models, allowing them to project the general contours of a season as it begins.

Weather and climate models are gradually converging and both are getting incredibly good.

They work even in astronomy. You take a climate model, set the parameters for Mars or some exoplanets and what you get is relatively good Mars climate model or good principled guess of of what the climate in tidal locked planet around ultra-cool red dwarf star is (TRAPPIST-1).

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#85

Post by scott_s »

mannykannot wrote: post #80
brootstrap wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. If you are needing down to the minute accurate timing of when rain is going to start & stop, sure nobody can predict that, for every location in the USA, all the time. I have to question where you are getting your weather forecast information??? I am a bachelor degree meteorologist, I dont use any apps that try to be 'hyper local' (omg i hate that word, it is the weather version of AI/ML hype). Just go to the g…

I get the feeling that this "hyper-local" mentality contributed to NYC and surrounding areas being caught flat-footed by the first-of-season snowfall at the end of last year. I have little understanding of meteorology, but it was clear, just from the forecast maps, that a small change in the location and timing of the rain/snow line would make a big difference to the outcome, and that something more than was forecast…

That snowfall last year was bizarre. We all knew it was going to happen - I remember thinking days in advance that I would probably leave work early. So I'm not sure why there was no salt on the roads in the NY area.

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#86

Post by pxlpshr »

brootstrap wrote: post #81

Just a little knowledge to drop, as a bachelor degree meteorologist and also coder / HN'er. Dont use your built in phone app for forecasts. Dont expect hour by hour precision (maybe for the next few hours sure, but not 2,3,4,5 days out). Trust nobody expect the trained professionals at NWS. These people look at ALL the models, they watch things like a hawk. I work with some of these nerds and it's crazy. They are lik…

I find Dark Sky to be the best forecasting tool for weather within the hour. It's almost always ahead of all the other apps in terms of the latest forecast.

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#87

Post by kawfey »

brootstrap wrote: post #81

Just a little knowledge to drop, as a bachelor degree meteorologist and also coder / HN'er. Dont use your built in phone app for forecasts. Dont expect hour by hour precision (maybe for the next few hours sure, but not 2,3,4,5 days out). Trust nobody expect the trained professionals at NWS. These people look at ALL the models, they watch things like a hawk. I work with some of these nerds and it's crazy. They are lik…

One of the things I loved best about Wunderground was their prominent display of the textual SFD. Now it's gotten a lot more mainstream, and still have increasingly accurate forecasts, but the SFD link has been dropped from the forecast page for any particular area.

Now my source is directly from NWS page, which is really nice since forecaster terms can be clicked to bring up a definition. https://forecast.weather.gov/product.php?site=LSX&issuedby=L...

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#88

Post by brootstrap »

bainsfather wrote: post #83
brootstrap wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmmm. If you are needing down to the minute accurate timing of when rain is going to start & stop, sure nobody can predict that, for every location in the USA, all the time. I have to question where you are getting your weather forecast information??? I am a bachelor degree meteorologist, I dont use any apps that try to be 'hyper local' (omg i hate that word, it is the weather version of AI/ML hype). Just go to the g…

Hi brootstrap, since you're a specialist in this field, I'd be interested in your views... here in the uk, I am often interested in whether or not it will rain in e.g. a 3 hour, 6 hour or 12 hour period. Either because I am going rock climbing, laying concrete, spraying weedkiller, painting outdoors, etc etc. Often this is very important (not just - 'oh, if only I took an umbrella today'). I have a strong impression…

Howdy from across the pond! To be honest, I have almost no experience forecasting for Europe so sadly I cant help too much with the specifics. You are right predicting rainfall at small scale is very hard.

I know that here in the midwest, we never have any days where the forecast at 5am says 'all sunny and zero chance of rain', and then randomly a huge thunderstorm pops up. The atmopshere just doesnt work that way. People get upset about probabilities of rainfall and all that. Just think of the model perspective. The model sees square grid cells that are many KM apart. If the storm shifts from one grid cell to the next one, not that big of a deal in the grand scheme of things. However if you live in that grid cell, your forecast just changed from getting dumped on to clear skies (or vice versa).

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#89

Post by travisjungroth »

brootstrap wrote: post #81

Just a little knowledge to drop, as a bachelor degree meteorologist and also coder / HN'er. Dont use your built in phone app for forecasts. Dont expect hour by hour precision (maybe for the next few hours sure, but not 2,3,4,5 days out). Trust nobody expect the trained professionals at NWS. These people look at ALL the models, they watch things like a hawk. I work with some of these nerds and it's crazy. They are lik…

Don't all those apps just get their data ultimately from the NWS?

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#90

Post by wenc »

pxlpshr wrote: post #86
brootstrap wrote: post #81

Just a little knowledge to drop, as a bachelor degree meteorologist and also coder / HN'er. Dont use your built in phone app for forecasts. Dont expect hour by hour precision (maybe for the next few hours sure, but not 2,3,4,5 days out). Trust nobody expect the trained professionals at NWS. These people look at ALL the models, they watch things like a hawk. I work with some of these nerds and it's crazy. They are lik…

I find Dark Sky to be the best forecasting tool for weather within the hour. It's almost always ahead of all the other apps in terms of the latest forecast.

I bought the app because of its hyperlocal forecasting, but it's been known to predict precipitation where there's none, and vice versa.

I wonder if it does better in some geographies than others (e.g. high pressure system areas where things are more stable)

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