No, it doesn’t work that way. Precipitation forecasts (what you hear and read from people) are driven by the precipitation amounts generated by numerical weather prediction models. If the models are putting 4” of precip on the ground then the folks on television are going to be saying the same thing unless there is some truly compelling reason not to believe it. However, models do have documented biases (and random errors) and adjustments may be made to attempt to deals with those biases. There may also be misinterpretation of the forecasts that people hear. For example, if you hear that there is a 50% chance of showers and it doesn’t rain where you are then you may interpret this as an over forecast of precipitation. Model performance is continually monitored and models are improved regularly to reduce errors.
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Originally Posted by retiredguy123
Weather forecasters often predict more rain than actually occurs. It happens too often to be an error. Personally, I think they do it on purpose. I don't know why, but could it be that, if it rains and they didn't predict it, they will be more heavily criticized?
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