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Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

theatlantic.com

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Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#3

why is my weatherman always wrong? :(

Because we tend to remember the few times where they get it very wrong (which is always going to happen because of the chaotic nature of weather) and ignore the large percentage of the time when they're right.

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#5

> In 2009, a back-of-the-envelope study estimated that U.S. adults check the weather forecast about 300 billion times per year. That's every single adult in the United States checking the weather four times a day . A bit more than I would have expected…

I'm not in the US, but as I like spending my weekends doing outdoor activities I check weather forecasts during the week a lot to try and plan what I'm going to do and where. Four times a day doesn't seem that much to me - I'd imagine people who work outdoors and farmers have even more reason to check the weather frequently.

[NB I even check multiple sources of weather information: BBC, Windy and MWIS].

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#7

> In 2009, a back-of-the-envelope study estimated that U.S. adults check the weather forecast about 300 billion times per year. That's every single adult in the United States checking the weather four times a day . A bit more than I would have expected…

I check the Air Quality Index probably 20X per day where I am in Thailand (Chiang Mai). Guess Americans are just neurotic when it comes to the elements.

Goes back to shopping for that NASA spacesuit...clean air wherever you go.

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#8

> In 2009, a back-of-the-envelope study estimated that U.S. adults check the weather forecast about 300 billion times per year. That's every single adult in the United States checking the weather four times a day . A bit more than I would have expected…

This number probably includes things like swiping to the leftmost home screen on your phone to see the weather widget at the top. When it's that easy you can often check the weather unintentionally.

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#9
This is an interesting example of an article that talks about gradual improvements in our lives that we take for granted at this point. It's strange because most articles are about dramatic deterioration. For example, it's unlikely we will read articles about the increase in % children who are vaccinated against basic diseases. It was 22% in 1980, 88% in 2016. Far more likely is reading reams of text devoted to the (for now) niche anti-vaxxer movement.

Re: Modern Weather Forecasts Are Stunningly Accurate

#10
Just follow few models for a couple of weeks and you will notice how inaccurate the weather forecast is.*

I do follow ECMWF and ICON and a bit of OpenWeather forecast and the differences in forecasted temperatures are often 2-3 degrees C. And everything with a horizon over 72 hours is just numerology. (OpenWeather showed -19C in early days of Feb just 2 days ago, today it is -2C).

Now a model is just a model (I had some experience with industrial and financial models) so they are good at this and not so good at that. And they are recalculated and self-adjusted over time. I can understand.

But from the user perspective there is huge difference between +1C tomorrow and -3C.

Windy app is using 4 models and has nice graphical comparision of forecasts.

* - What I mean here is that meteorologists have good understanding of processes but the numbers that we are getting could be as well random.

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