Quote:
Originally Posted by retiredguy123
Every morning, I check the Weather Channel app to see if it is going to rain. Today, it said that there was a 71 percent chance for rain at 5 pm. But, now, at 3 pm, the chance for rain at 5 pm is only 40 percent. I understand that a forecast can change, but this pattern occurs almost every day. The chance for rain at 5 pm is very high in the early morning, but then it decreases as the time gets closer to 5 pm. It almost never increases. It happens so often that I believe that the forecasters are intentionally publishing a higher chance for rain in the morning than the data actually suggests. Has anyone else noticed this trend and is there a logical explanation?
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Weather forecast are not for a pinpoint location, somewhere like your house or front yard. Instead they cover a much larger geographical area, sometimes of many, many square miles. When a forecast calls for say a 50% of rain it simply means rain is predicted for 50% of the covered geographical area, not a 50-50% of rain over the entire area. So, when you see a 100% chance of rain, you know it will rain at your house and in your front yard, anything less than 100% means you may or not see rain.