NFT: Has weather forecasting gotten noticeably worse?

Very close attention as well due to running a horse farm. There will be times that says it's going to rain that makes me wait to go get hay and shavings and it doesn't happen and vice versa.

Is the best one Eric.

I’ve found accuracy to be incredibly better in recent years.

I think it helps if you’re using a phone or other device that relays location. Just relying on your particular city or county is too broad a brush. I’ve have times when it’s pouring rain and someone not far away says they have nothing. All weather is local.

I only use NOAA at this point. Love the hourly graph feature. I figure if all the other sites are using government data for their forecasts, might as well go to the source, minus the hyperbole.

same as it ever was for me. I would say pretty consistently accurate, with the occasional miss. the occasional misses were mostly in the winter with storm accumulations.

mobile apps provide more real-time/hourly forecast ability.

The weather is a big deal in the winter. They are hardly ever right anymore. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that even the radar can be wrong as well. There can me nothing on the radar and it will be snowing like crazy

my irrigation system has a rain sensor and if it's raining or rained recently automatically skips that day, plus I upgraded the interface to a mobile app so I can control it remotely if I need to.

In comment 16495391 18E said:

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Is the best one Eric.

I've tried it... and others... maybe it's the area I live.

But even the radar is off. When it's green, it isn't raining here. And it's raining sometimes when the radar says it is not.

In comment 16495418 OBJRoyal said:

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The weather is a big deal in the winter. They are hardly ever right anymore. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that even the radar can be wrong as well. There can me nothing on the radar and it will be snowing like crazy

You beat me to it! The radar isn't right anymore.

I NEVER had this problem.

In comment 16495410 Furman said:

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I only use NOAA at this point. Love the hourly graph feature. I figure if all the other sites are using government data for their forecasts, might as well go to the source, minus the hyperbole.

I looked at it a while ago... I'll check it again.

What is driving me crazy is the radar is even off.

Get a radar app and you can check with pretty high accuracy pending weather within a few hours. I use noaa radar plus

In comment 16495434 Eric from BBI said:

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In comment 16495418 OBJRoyal said: Quote: The weather is a big deal in the winter. They are hardly ever right anymore. The biggest thing I’ve noticed is that even the radar can be wrong as well. There can me nothing on the radar and it will be snowing like crazy You beat me to it! The radar isn't right anymore. I NEVER had this problem.

We laugh a lot over the winter about how bad it is

about the inaccuracy of the iPhone weather app, but don’t recall the reason. But yeah, forecasts are notoriously wrong more often than not. Anyway, the post made me think of the gamble Ike took going ahead with Operation Overlord afternoon D-Day was pushed back because of the weather.

Have you noticed? Like, some of it’s just too minty.

Geez, I have seen alerts on my phone saying that it will rain in my location in 15 minute and sure enough it starts raining right on time.

I can imagine that different locations have different prediction results.

That being said, weather prediction in the NY metro area is spot on.

and climate change had injected more energy into the atmosphere, making the weather even more volatile. Short term forecasting seems good but more than about 12 hours out the forecast can change pretty rapidly.

I go by zipcode and it does a fairly good job. I also notice that it's accurate in predicting rain or non-rain in my zip code versus Yankee Stadium, which is probably only around 10-15 miles away as the crow flies.

and his "office" was in the on site weather center in Poughkeepsie, NY. The radar guys would tell me that anything predicted after 48 hours was an educated guess. Since then, IBM built up and sold their weather unit. It had been ranked as the World's Most Accurate Forecaster as recently as 2021. Their app (The Weather Channel) does have updates and I just updated mine now because of your post. Hope this helps!

In comment 16495391 18E said:

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Is the best one Eric.

I use the accuweather app as well and its pretty good.

I have had issues with their radar too. The link has the best radar and model results. Do your own forecasts.
Mike’s weather page - ( New Window )

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Link - ( New Window )

predictions seem to be worse, but are they worse because we perceive the technology is better so prognosticators should be better. And believe it or not, their predictions have been altered due to government intervention and lawsuits. Yes, down in FL, NWS was sued by a family because their members went out on a boat and a storm popped up causing the boat to sink...so now NWS over predicts storms.

Radar - sorry boys, radar shows what radar shows. The problem is few of you know what you are seeing all the time. I don't mean to be disrespectful, but I have had over 50 years working with radar being a ships officer. Yes, sometimes radar seems to show rain, but it is getting returns from low heavily moisture laden clouds. Those clouds may have sufficient moisture to produce rain, but insufficient to cause it to fall. Radar shows returns on things that are dense enough to reflect radio waves that the radar transmitted and received back. The real meteorologists are very good at interpreting the radar, but rain cells can be quite localized as anyone living in Florida can tell you.

Again, I am not trying to be condescending, but even experts can be fooled. But radar is very reliable.

they are pretty accurate.

is creating a Bermuda triangle kind of effect?

can be wrong 50% of the time and still have a job.

The pattern here in upsate NY seems to be come Monday the long range forecast always looks promising for the weekend. As each day goes on the temps get lower and the percentage of bad weather for the weekend increases. Come Thursday it is completely different and the weekend - weather sucks and Monday & Tuesday look good

And it seems to change every 48 hours. Two days ago, it was supposed to be in the 60s and raining here and it's 77 and hot with no rain. Last winter we went away for a night, snow showers were forecast and we got 11" of snow.

As for apps, try the Weatherbug, it's usually good with alerting you what's happening when and the radar is usually accurate.

In comment 16498693 Bubba said:

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can be wrong 50% of the time and still have a job.

“Rookies” - Angel Hernandez

In comment 16499627 Joey in VA said:

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And it seems to change every 48 hours. Two days ago, it was supposed to be in the 60s and raining here and it's 77 and hot with no rain. Last winter we went away for a night, snow showers were forecast and we got 11" of snow. As for apps, try the Weatherbug, it's usually good with alerting you what's happening when and the radar is usually accurate.

I am wondering if this is a local issue in VA. Here in central NJ, I find the weather apps are mostly accurate.

Maybe it just seems that way because now it's easy to get hour by hour, or even minute by minute, forecasts. Years ago, the forecasts were more general.

In any case, it may be that the weather itself has become more erratic and less predictable. It sure seems that way.

stanford u. article on weather predictability - ( New Window )

and it’s usually spot on. You need to pay attention to the percentages more than anything along with the hour by hour prediction.