# Weather on websites
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weather-on-websites/439633
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [February 29, 2008, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weather-on-websites/439633 "2008-02-29T13:22:00Z")
**Posts on this page:** 5
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Neur0mancer\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Neur0mancer_1)
#### Post date: [February 29, 2008, 1:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weather-on-websites/439633/1 "2008-02-29T13:22:00Z")
Today, Yahoo Weather lists the high in my city as being 29 degrees, and the low as 22 degrees. The stupid thing about this is that it’s 12 degrees right now, and Yahoo posts that right next to their forecast that says it’s not going to get nearly that cold today.
My question is, how/why does this happen? You’d think if the temp drops below the lowest expected for the day, they’d adjust the low for the day to match (and the same for the high temp, I guess). Any ideas?
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### Author:  [@Philster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Philster)
#### Post date: [February 29, 2008, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weather-on-websites/439633/2 "2008-02-29T14:18:23Z")
That’s their forecasted numbers…and even if wrong, it doesn’t change the fact that they forecasted something different.
Forecasters of \>insert anything\< are sometimes discouraged from yanking the forecast when the ‘actuals’ wind up being different. People who depend on forecasts of all kinds feel this is tinkering with the accuracy.
It could be call volume, temperatures, stock prices, etc. It is considered deceptive to yank the forecast and revise it to reflect the actuals.
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### Author:  [@JpnDude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JpnDude)
#### Post date: [February 29, 2008, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weather-on-websites/439633/3 "2008-02-29T14:46:19Z")
Even in Japan among my fellow photography hobbyists, the “Yahoo! Japan Weather Page” has a bad reputation for being frequently inaccurate.
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### Author:  [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)
#### Post date: [February 29, 2008, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weather-on-websites/439633/4 "2008-02-29T15:10:54Z")
Someone around here once claimed that when you see “High 29, Low 22” that it means “Highest temperature today will be 29, Lowest temperature tonight/tomorrow morning will be 22”, so the 22 is referring to _tomorrow_ morning, not the morning you are experiencing right now. Your current 12 would have been _yesterday’s_ low forecast.
Not sure if that is correct or not, but that is one way of looking at it I suppose.
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### Author:  [@Gfactor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gfactor)
#### Post date: [February 29, 2008, 3:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/weather-on-websites/439633/5 "2008-02-29T15:16:11Z")
[QUOTE=tanstaafl]
Someone around here once claimed that when you see “High 29, Low 22” that it means “Highest temperature today will be 29, Lowest temperature tonight/tomorrow morning will be 22”, so the 22 is referring to _tomorrow_ morning, not the morning you are experiencing right now. Your current 12 would have been _yesterday’s_ low forecast.
Not sure if that is correct or not, but that is one way of looking at it I suppose.
[/QUOTE]
> [@](#):
>
> We contacted meteorological personnel at all major television
> and print media outlets in Milwaukee, and
> learned that two of the five media outlets indeed define
> the low as the “daily low,” the minimum temperature
> expected to occur in a 24-h period beginning at
> midnight. The other three, however, define the low
> as the “overnight low,” the minimum temperature
> expected to occur during the night.
[http://www.uwm.edu/~kahl/Research/Kahl&Horwitz2003.pdf](http://www.uwm.edu/~kahl/Research/Kahl&Horwitz2003.pdf)