What happened to the rain?
 

According to the forecast, we were supposed to get 4-5 inches of much needed rain this week. I was looking forward to a few rainy days.

The heaviest rain was supposed to be today. I only got about 1/4 inch yesterday and the current forecast shows very little rain for today. And forecasts for Thursday and Friday are much less than they were on Sunday.

I live in Sawgrass. Any significant rain in other areas of the Villages?

It’s Florida it rains here but not two or three miles away especially in the summer. Watch the weather on television and they generally tell you who got rain and who didn’t. We are currently traveling so I don’t know if it rain in my Village or not unless I talk to a neighbor. It doesn’t matter as my irrigation will take care of the yard anyway.

Surprised we got so little

Don’t give up on it yet, still early.

I’m in the Hammock @ Fenney….we hardly got any.

I turned off my irrigation in anticipation of rain. Sorry! My bad!

What happened???.........it bounced off the bubble.

Hopefully, the hurricane season will treat us the same way.

This is a common result of fast-changing jet-stream patterns -- the models can't handle it -- which is part of the reason why all the climate models are failures. The rains are farther south, but we did get some "relatively" cooler air. This failure to forecast the rain lies in the fact that the models still don't understand how the sun controls our climate -- which explains why the models are unable to see why hurricanes and tornadoes have been decreasing for the past 30 years. This will discussed at 4 PM this Friday (June 14) at Lake Miona for the Philosophy Club.

We’ve been in TV for ten years now. Can’t tell you how many times it was “100% rain” forecast. Checked out radar and, clear - then yellow- then orange - then RED - then clear. So many times watching radar it looked like Moses parting the sea right before it came to us.
Forecast and radar looks like red/orange from 5-6:00. Don’t take that to any bank.
In one word…. Florida.

Not to be confused with the Weather Club?

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?

There has always been a propensity to over-forecast throughout history -- choosing to be better warned than not at all. The bigger problem is lack of data and lack of knowledge about how our atmosphere & climate works -- which is why forecasts quickly deteriorate with time - especially during rapidly changing jet streams.

It went south.

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.

Thank your God that Philosophers will only be discussing the weather.
Can you imagine how long the weather forecast would last if they were giving it?

The weather forecast inaccuracies are not unique to Florida. I've seen them most everywhere I have lived but especially along the Gulf Coast, the source of much of the moisture that feeds these storms. About the only time forecasts here are somewhat accurate is when a front is coming down from the northwest. You can often see the leading edge of the front and its associated thunderstorms as it approaches, often days in advance. The forecasters really blew this week's forecasts. Yes, the models are responsible but the models are just a tool used by meteorologists. I saw instances where the forecast went from 2.5 inches in a day, to .5 and then back to 1.5 and then down to .2 then to .001 in about a 5 hour period. Same thing the next day. In the end, we got no measurable rain. I am no meteorologist but I told my wife that they are seeing something I wasn't and went ahead an watered my lawn on schedule even though it was forecasted to rain over 2 inches that day.

As stated before....selfishly, I only watch for the weather babes. Right or wrong, rarely do I listen to their forecasts! Especially the local affiliates, these forecasts are driven by the HD, Lowe’s of the world and for obvious reasons. Hysteria sells.

Wouldn’t that forecast be correct 100% of the time??

Forecasters are often very pretty females so who listens to the forecast?

Reminds me of the movie Anchorman....

Ron Burgundy : Brian, I'm gonna be honest with you, that cologne smells like pure gasoline. Brian Fantana : They've done studies, you know. 60% of the time, it works every time.

No, the forecasters didn’t “blow” anything. There were weak gradients so the overall predictability was low and the spacial variability was high. I, by the way, received just under an inch of rain on Tuesday. Models are tools but the forecasters are totally dependent on the models. There is a scientific limit to the predictability of convection in weak, unstable flow regimes. The probability functions assigned to the forecasts reflected this.

Perfect illustration of why all climate models fail. If you can't forecast 2 days out -- you certainly can't forecast 2 years out.

Agree.

More likely though it "if it bleeds, it leads". The more doom and gloom is predicted, the more people will tune to/click/watch the predictor(s) in question.

It was the same in Minnesota. I can't tell you the number of times that SNOW UP TO YOUR NOSTRILS was predicted along with DANGEROUS WINDS and followed, of course, by the dreaded POLAR VORTEX!!!!! coming to park right over us. So more often than not we'd end up with about 4-6 inches, a few drifts, and a welcome if cold respite of bright clear blue skies so we could clear what accumulated in the driveway. In other words, normal if boring winter weather. But people don't click on normal and boring, so...

‘Models’ no pun intended there!
When they refer to the ‘European models’ and the ‘spaghetti charts’.....I’m looking for a 5’10” brunette in a spaghetti strap!

This is nonsense. You clearly have no understanding of the fundamental difference between deterministic weather simulations and climate simulations, which by the way are typically decades in length. And they all have probability functions.

June 14, at 4 PM, at the Philosophy Club, at Lake Miona ... where you can explain why those probability functions have failed the climate models.

A 50% chance of rain prediction in Florida is an average. It will rain 100% somewhere but 0% somewhere else. Thus, a 50% chance.

No thanks. I don’t go to meetings to discuss your flat earth theories or your cherry picking of other peoples’ data without providing reference.

You can think of a 50% probability as the percentage of an area that will receive some rainfall in the warm season. The winter and shoulder months are different.

And a 50% chance that it won’t rain. Kind of like a coin flip?

People want black and white in a gray world and linear in a non-linear world. There are limits to the predictability of warm season convection with very weak flow. It can rain on one side of The Villages and not the other. Large spatial variabilities exist. Cool season predictability is much higher. We generate unsteady solutions to non-linear PDEs where chaos theory applies. There are limits.

Bingo - exactly right. Humans by default, think linearly. Our atmosphere is complex and reacts in a non-linear fashion, both in space and time -- and this is especially true for climate models. As such, they are unable to replicate some of earth's basic air/ocean wind & thermal patterns, such as ENSO and QBO. If you can't replicate the past, you can't forecast the future. As for hurricane outlooks, they only got it right 3 times during the past 28 years of April outlooks.

Your conflating of weather prediction and climate modeling demonstrates that you don’t understand the science of either and you telling me what is correct is laughable. Please post your peer reviewed AMS journal papers.

Yes, I see the problem ... which explains why more and more folks sign up for monthly future talks announcements following each weather club presentation.

Irregardless of this all when will it rain again:a20:

Officially: It is typical of Earth in the current Ice Age to have turbulent weather due to large temperature deltas between the equator and poles from lack of cloud cover globally. When/if the planet warms, there will be more cloud cover and smaller temperature deltas and therefore less turbulence for easier model forecasting.

Reality: I didn't wash my car so it didn't rain. Sorry.

When all the weather presenters show maps with 5 inches of rain in this entire area, I would expect something like that. Followed by words like "everybody will see rain" means they are 100% sure of rain in the area.
There is no gray area there. No hint of it being "spotty".
Yet a few areas got 1 inch. Others got zero.

Sensationalism is what was done. Be sure to tune in at the next newscast for the latest updates.
Conditions people to not believe them. With good reason - they really blew it. Again.
What happens to the next tornado warning? Truth or more alarmist garbage?

Agree ... and the reason why Global Warming was changed to Climate Change will be revealed June 14 at 4 PM at Lake Miona -- for those who haven't figured it our yet.

I keep trying to turn off my irrigation, but then it doesn't rain & I have to turn it back on again. :undecided:

So by being a retired Weather Person you might be 50% right or 50% wrong.