It seems they are getting more and more inaccurate than more accurate.
Case-in-point:
1)Went home to ski. I checked out the local forecast and it was for the town in which the ski are is(not a city 100 miles away). Two days out the lows were supposed to be around 15. It got to 0 one night in town. I can see missing it by a few degrees but 15!! That is a huge difference in being prepared. I have a diesel vehicle and that temp difference is huge when talking about starting them, let alone being prepared with clothing.
2)Tomorrow night here locally. I have heard anything from -5 to 12 degrees for a low. Again, preparing the house for 12 degrees is a LOT different than -5!!
What is going on? Too much computer info and not enough PRACTICAL experience??
Where I live, we have four main local news stations. Three of them have meteorologists with between ten and twenty years experience locally each. All of them have become drastically worse in predicting not only what it’s going to do, but how long, and how much each storm is going to drop.
I follow the weather very closely all year long and have noticed that just over the last three to four years the big differences have been. 1) They only read what’s on the computer printout, period. They no longer embellish it at all based on their own experiences or past historical occurances. 2) They no longer say anything when they get it completely wrong, which is quite often now. Before, they used to admit that they were either way off, or we lucked out by missing the bullet etc. 3) They used to be able to get relatively close at amount predictions anywhere between 36 to 24 hours in advance of the storm. Now, they just keep saying that it’s very complicated, and it can do just about anything precipitation wise, right up till it’s on our doorstep or starts. It’s almost to the point where they’re starting to have trouble with the sunrise and sunset times!
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. They seem to be pretty close most of the time. I rarely watch local news because it is usually as useful as the weather predictions from the meteorologists.
We’re used to not getting real close forcasts due to being a fair distance from major population centers. They aren’t even sure if it is raining / snowing here at the time due to the radar overshooting us.
My wife is a meteorologist for the National Weather Service… and I can tell you what we have found the problem to be.
To many people rely on Weather.com (The weather channel) or accuweather.
I’m sorry, but a meteorologist in Georgia (TWC) or Pennsylvania (Accuweather) knows squat about your local area. Here in Wyoming it always amuses me with their forecasts.
Most news programs and newspapers pay for a 3rd party source to give them their forecast such as the ones mentioned above.
My philosophy has always been… when in doubt visit weather.gov
Additionally most offices have shortcuts to get you to your forecasting office. For instance, here it is www.weather.gov/riw
If you live in SoCal and watch the NBC channel 4 news in the morning you don’t care if the weather girl gets it right or not. It’s a treat just to see her.
Hum well as an aviator I can tell you about some really hair raising and some deadly aviation weather related accidents due to blown forecasts from NOAA, the FAA and various other government agencies. My bet is there are a large number of NOAA Meteorologists that were educated at PSU and did internships at Accuweather and The Weather Channel.
Being an aviator means living in the atmosphere and learning to never, ever fully trust any forecast form any agency. The atmospheric dynamics can render that forecast outdated in seconds. Meteorology has been referred to as “Scientific Wild A@@ed Guess”. Granted it is a guess with somewhat large degree of accuracy. Even most NOAA forecasts are ballpark type for cast when compared to the accuracy needed by aviation and maritime operations.
Best meteorologists in the world are hands down The United States Navy. Then comes Air Force and Army. I will take an accurate Pi-rep any day over any other report.
When you owns the world’s smallest airport and continually move them around weather gets to be a little more important.
The only problem with Navy aviation is when their pilot retire and go the airlines. They have a hard time getting used to letting the plane come to a gentle stop.
The weather channels here make any kind of front or weather incident sound very dramatic/drastic. If you listen to them, you’ll never go anywere or do anything. I’m sure they dramatize for ratings.
Don’t you know??? Mother Nature has to have a good laugh every once in a while. Give her a couple of weeks until her sides are really sore from laughter, and the forecasts will get closer to what really is!!
I took the Navy’s Basic Meteorological Course on the USS Nassau in 96. More as something to occupy my time, I was an Avionics Tech on the AV8B Harrier.
I stopped watching the Weather Channel years ago.
When they became more interested in ‘global warming’ than the weather I was done with them.
I used to see on the weather channel ‘forecast’ there was always snow in the 4-5 day forecast. Do they still do that?
When I check out the weather I look at the animated map. You can tell what’s going to happen from it.
I guess my Grandmother’s idea for knowing the weather wasn’t so bad after all: she had a piece of white rope about 12 inches long hanging on her clothes line right outside the kitchen window. When the rope was wet it was raining, dry it wasn’t raining. When the rope was swinging it was windy, when it was ice covered it was below freezing. When the rope was bright is was dry and sunny and dark and grayish indicated it was cloudy and damp. That seemed to be all she needed to know. Worked everytime. :lol:
From what I remember of my 23 years as an Army paratrooper, the only time weather made a difference to a grunt was on jump day. Once on the ground, we did what we had to do, no matter what the weather. I imagine the Marine grunts were the same.
I have bad knees (23 years as a paratrooper) that let me know what the weather is going to do, seems to be pretty accurate. We also have the Mount Rainier weather device. If you can see the mountain, it’s going to rain, if you can’t see the mountain, it’s already raining.
