More accurate rain forecast needed
 

I have been using the weather.com website for years and, at this time of year, they always start off by predicting a high chance of rain in the afternoon which, quite often, drops away dramatically

For example, at 3pm this afternoon (2pm in brackets) they showed the following chance of rain:

5pm - 41% (76%)
6pm - 71% (98%)
7pm - 79% (98%)
8pm - 71% (68%)

so, in the space of an hour, their prediction for rain at 6pm and 7pm dropped from a confident "almost certain" 98% to considerably less.

To put it another way, their prediction of "no rain" at 6pm has soared from 2% to 29%!

I know weather forecasting is an inaccurate science, but they can see what's coming from hundreds of miles away so why can't they be a little more accurate for what's going to happen in just a few hours?

Their percentages for rain do this almost every day - go on-line in the morning and they will predict a very high chance of rain, yet a few hours later it will most likely have plummeted

It's almost as if they start off with exactly the same figures every day, ignoring all of their instruments, then crank them down as time goes on, just to give themselves something to do

Anyway, what sites do you use for weather in the next 24 hours?

Thank you

This time of year, hard to predict as showers are so scattered. So you won’t get rain but 1/2 mile away they will get 4”. Rain chances as forecast by the weather service is for a broad area, not just the villages or Leesburg.

Best thing to do, watch the sky and Doppler radar.

Or just look out the window

All of the weather apps are wildly inaccurate at times. I have tried them all, but always come back to weather.com which I find to be the least bad. YMMV

I said the same thing on another thread. I am convinced that they do it on purpose because they don't want to be criticized for predicting no rain, and then it rains. I use The Weather Channel and the Weatherbug. Both do the same thing. It is not inaccurate predictions, but a deliberate attempt to deceive the public. They almost always predict more rain than actually occurs.

Your funny! a false weather forecast to deceive the public… For what purpose ?

I’d think they offer a “worse case scenario”. Plan for the worst, hope for the best.

This is a fairly simple synopsis of how that "percentage" is calculated. It is a different than most folks assume.


How our meteorologists calculate rain percentages and what it means

The app is called "Windy"
They have many layers of information

There is no question in my mind that they are trying to deceive the public. If you follow the weather forecasts, you will know that also.

Why do they do it? I'm not certain, but I think that they don't want to be criticized for predicting that it will not rain and then it does.

Why would anybody think otherwise? If I've learned anything in the last 4 years, it's that you can't trust anything. Not the weather apps, definitely not the government, and certainly not the MSM.

Obviously in the case of weather apps, the hedging is more about not being wrong rather than active lying and deception, but still.....

Answer is simple.

98% chance generates more hits than 76% chance.

1. The answer as to why the rain forecasts stink is reviewed in the Weather Club's talk called "Why the European Weather Model is Best" ... which is next given August 19 at 10 AM at Everglades for the Science & Tech Club - South.

2. Even though the Euro Model is better, we are still far from accurate daily rain forecasts due to (1) lack of sufficient data and (2) lack of knowledge of how clouds work.

3. With a few trillion dollars injected into improving weather data & science, we could be much closer to better forecasts, but we instead spend it on the fake climate crisis.

If you watch the storm cloud system formation, it is spontaneous during this time of year. It changes literally in minutes. there can be no rain at your location and 2 inches a mile away. Nothing/Nobody can predict that with even 50% accuracy.

The weather channels need to shock/scare you into watching (by getting your attention) like every other A/V channel. They use to use pretty/shapely weather girls but that is no longer politically correct :)

"Dog Bites Man" gets no views..."Man Bites Dog" gets millions of views.

When they say 80% chance of rain, they don’t mean there’s an 80% chance it’s going to rain, it means 80% of the area will get rain. on Tuesday, there was a huge electrical storm and I live by Sawgrass Grove and got Buckets of rain. I went to Lake Sumter Landing the next day for an appt. The computer got hit by lightning but they never got a drop of rain there. I remember many times where it would rain at my house and never at my friends down the street.

I certainly feel your pain. When I take a boat out of Crystal river headed out to the gulf to go scalloping, I count on that since it takes over half an hour to get back in to land. I went out last Saturday with The Weather Channel app telling me less than 20% all afternoon. I got a couple miles out and could literally see lightning fairly close by. We hightailed it back just to be on the safe side.