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WeatherNext 3

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Re: WeatherNext 3

#101

Post by [deleted] »

jasoncartwright wrote: post #91
roryirvine wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, the Met Office and BBC (which I believe use data from Meteo France) are both much more accurate for "later today" weather than Google for me in London. Google does update its forecast more frequently, and usually is as accurate as the others for the hour ahead. And the longer range 3+ day forecasts aren't noticeably worse either. It's just the intermediate 4 - 48 hour stuff that they're surprisingly terrible wi…

Since last year the BBC is back using the Met Office https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/crm4z8mple3o

[deleted]

Re: WeatherNext 3

#102

Post by jvanderbot »

2PqboPPmKegvanx wrote: post #98
jvanderbot wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My work involves parsing real-time weather data at an existential level - because our entire use case is built around providing weather-related alerts and re-routes for aircraft. The accuracy of weather data has been largely unaffected since DOGE took hold. The reliability of the infra, however, has suffered somewhat. There are more outages now than there ever were, with a massive spike in outages, not kidding, the m…

question for you but what weather app / tool are you using in your personal life, as someone who works in that general industry.

You're gonna laugh, but...

I ask alexa and it generally does fine. If uncertain I go outside for a bit and look at clouds.

For the details, you just have to know how your local weather works - thunderstorms come in squall lines here, or are hot-day flash storms.

Blizzards follow warm still weather the same way, but mostly in Jan-Mar, when the jet stream curls away and will snap back to bring arctic air down.

Moisture (rain/slush potential) follows California rain by 2 days or so. If my friends in cali complain about rain, I know we're gonna have school closures if in the winter.

If I really need to drill in on rain/snow chance, I google for a weather radar and do prediction in my own head. (windy.com is ok, accuweather is real data to watch). Storms generally move linearly or rotate, and gentle rain is wide while torrential rain is clustered.

Locally, many of the old wives tales about the shape of clouds or direction of wind vs prevailing (with against, cross-grain) are true enough for 12h-24h predictions in upper midwest USA.

Re: WeatherNext 3

#103

Post by mathgeek »

> As our weather grows more extreme, the stakes grow higher.

Never let a good crisis go to waste for marketing, especially if the product you're promoting is contributing to exacerbating it.

Re: WeatherNext 3

#104

Post by counters »

__alexs wrote: post #76
counters wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is little to no evidence that the current degradation of the US upper air backbone is regularly contributing to degraded forecast skill. That might change as we head into the more active northern hemisphere winter.

That's because NOAA are not doing the tests that would produce such evidence.

They are, as are plenty of folks in the community. I expect to see some good talks on this at the AMS Annual Meeting in January, based solely on my own peer network and what colleagues have mentioned they're working on.

Re: WeatherNext 3

#105

Post by counters »

exhilaration wrote: post #43
bastawhiz wrote: post #27

It's great that they're working on this, but I am puzzled at how absolutely awful the forecasts are in the Google weather app for my area. The forecast will show no rain, the radar view shows nothing, meanwhile it's pouring outside and every other app I check shows it. I know I can't expect it to be perfect, but being terribly wrong even one in ten times is enough to tarnish its reputation permanently.

The Google daily and hourly forecasts aren't great, but the weather map forecast is excellent. Where does that come from? What's generating the predicted movement of the storm clouds?

It's their two weather models, WeatherNext and MetNet.

Re: WeatherNext 3

#106

Post by counters »

witweb wrote: post #41

There is a great article from the German Meteorological Service on WeatherNext 3 and how AI-based weather models will probably co-exist with physics-based ones. https://www.dwd.de/DE/wetter/thema_des_tages/2026/9/6.html (German only)

There's another tool which seemed to coordinate with the launch of WeatherNext 3 last week, the "Operational WeatehrBench" from Brightband -> https://owb.brightband.com/

It features a couple of AI and NWP model forecasts for comparison.

Re: WeatherNext 3

#107

Post by celsoazevedo »

altcognito wrote: post #34
bilsbie wrote: post #31

It’s crazy we’ll never have forecasts as good as dark sky again. What kind of magic were they doing?

The only forecasted rainfall for local areas within a very short timeframe. This made it possible to utilize simple factors to predict the near future. It is built into Apple Weather after Apple purchased them.

Something changed because Apple Weather has never been as accurate as Dark Sky for me, especially for rain forecast.

I used to be able to go on walks without an umbrella because of how reliable it was at predicting when rain was going to restart. If I do that with Apple Weather, I get home wet.

Re: WeatherNext 3

#108

Post by throw0101a »

yreg wrote: post #78
throw0101a wrote: post #22

There's reduced data available for initial conditions, so I wonder how that will effect things: * https://apnews.com/article/weather-forecasts-worsen-doge-tru... * https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... A good book on the history of forecasting, The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast : * https://www.andrewblum.net/the-weather-machine-2

Don't plenty of android devices have barometers? I expect Google being Google and recording all that data unless you opt out. Would that be practical for weather forecasting or not really?

> Would that be practical for weather forecasting or not really?

What are the conditions at 5000 feet, 10000, etc? What is the location of the jet stream and its strength? The reduced number of (e.g.) weather balloons is hindering forecasts (per the links).

Re: WeatherNext 3

#109

Post by Majromax »

yreg wrote: post #78
throw0101a wrote: post #22

There's reduced data available for initial conditions, so I wonder how that will effect things: * https://apnews.com/article/weather-forecasts-worsen-doge-tru... * https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic... A good book on the history of forecasting, The Weather Machine: A Journey Inside the Forecast : * https://www.andrewblum.net/the-weather-machine-2

Don't plenty of android devices have barometers? I expect Google being Google and recording all that data unless you opt out. Would that be practical for weather forecasting or not really?

A barometer will give you surface pressure, but that's a field that tends to vary relatively slowly over the surface of the Earth. The calibrated weather stations that exist at every airstrip do a reasonable job of providing these conditions over land, and the residual of "pressure from phones" probably won't help all that much.

The data that would be most valuable to initial conditions is upper-atmosphere winds -- this is the kind of data given by weather balloons. In clear air there's no great way to measure this from either the ground or from space.

One important supplemental data source here are aviation reports, from planes flying at altitude and particularly trans-oceanic routes. When air traffic was largely curtailed during the early phase of the Covid pandemic, weather forecasting suffered a bit for the lack of data (see eg https://www.ecmwf.int/en/about/media-centre/news/2020/drop-a...).

Re: WeatherNext 3

#110

Post by heckelson »

jedberg wrote: post #60
bastawhiz wrote: post #27

It's great that they're working on this, but I am puzzled at how absolutely awful the forecasts are in the Google weather app for my area. The forecast will show no rain, the radar view shows nothing, meanwhile it's pouring outside and every other app I check shows it. I know I can't expect it to be perfect, but being terribly wrong even one in ten times is enough to tarnish its reputation permanently.

It's because the current administration cut NOAAs funding, which means fewer weather balloons, which means less data to make a prediction. And it means less real time updates. So yeah, when it rains, it might take a few hours for that to flow into your weather app. It's a direct result of DOGE.

when it rains, it pours!
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