We’re going to be at Disneyland in a while and like Go-Kart Mozart, I’m checking out the weather chart. Apple’s Weather app uses The Weather Channel data but has different forecasting than TWC itself. Wunderground has a different opinion. None of them can even agree on what the temperature is now, never mind a 10-day forecast.
And then there’s rain - one says essentially no chance of rain, another says 30% chance.
Who do I trust?
Forecastadvisor.com claims to tell you which service has the most accurate forecast. Right now, for Anaheim it says AccuWeather is the most accurate for the last month they checked which was April, but for the year of 2022 Weather Underground was the most accurate.
But, you know, if you’ll be there soon, it’s Southern California in the summer. There isn’t going to be a lot of leeway.
Professionally speaking, just use NWS. Everybody else takes NWS’s raw data and puts a spin on it.
The average error on 10-day forecasts is little better than guesswork. Particularly on the US west coast where Disneyland is, detailed weather is simply not meaningfully predictable 10 days out.
When are you going to be there? Consult an almanac plus/minus two weeks of your intended date and average what you read. That’ll be as good as anything the best computers can come up with more than about 5 days out.
From 5 days hence through to a couple days after today, even west coast US forecasts are great. Further into the future than that? Fuggedaboudit.
Two words: June Gloom
Speaking as an amateur meteorologist: I agree. Weather.gov is the NWS’s website; you can type in any city or ZIP code, and get the local forecast. Here’s the forecast page for Anaheim:
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33.83286000000004&lon=-117.91523999999998
Having grown up just a few miles from Disneyland I can say that June weather there is highly predictable. You don’t need a forecast, you just need a calendar. As @Elmer_J.Fudd says: June Gloom.
Cool and damp in the morning (50F at worst, 55F more likely), turning to hot and sunny from 11am to 4pm (high around 75F, maybe 80F, but only briefly), then cooling, clouding, and dampening again until it’s downright chilly by late evening. Some breeze, not much.
Anaheim is far enough inland they avoid the worst of the gloom & chill; it’s a bigger diurnal shift right at the beach. But still, plan sweatshirts & windbreakers, plus short sleeve shirts and sunscreen. You’ll need both for a day in SoCal in June. Rain? Hah. It is to laugh. Drought is much more likely.
My flying is a lot more weather dependent & much more of a micro-climate than his but I can tell you we’re routinely looking at multiple forecasts, especially winds & they don’t always match, both speed & direction, & sometimes none of them match our actual observations on the field for that time period.
A week before big event someone asked my boss what he was going to do about the awful forecast.
His reply was, “Smile”
A cocked-head quizzical dog look followed by a, “Huh?”
His response was, “The weather forecasts are never right this far out & if they’re saying it’s going to be awful, well it can only get better so I’m smiling.”
I love June Gloom.
Way better than scorching heat.
To me, even 80 isnt “hot”. Warm, sure, but not hot.
90 is kinda hot.
Not this year, and light drizzle can occur during the night hours.
I think you’re there. I’m not. I defer to your current local knowledge.
For me personally 80 is not hot; in fact it’s kinda cool. For somebody who dressed heavily for 50s chill and gloom in the morning, discovering the sun beating down on them in mid afternoon might be an uncomfortably hot surprise. That was the point I was aiming at, no matter how clumsily I may have said it. All-day park visitors need to plan for a wide temperature swing and for both sun & clouds.
I’m three blocks from the beach south of Marina del Rey. We haven’t had more than 15 minutes of sun in a day for months now. They were calling it May Gray, before we moved into June Gloom. I remember a columnist in the L.A. Times ages ago (Jack Smith) who wanted to call it Jacaranda June, since that’s when the Jacarandas were in bloom.
When I was young enough that I’d go to Disneyland at opening and stay at least until the fireworks, we always got a locker on Main Street as soon as we got inside. We’d leave our jackets there until we needed them.
Jack Smith. Now that’s a name I’ve not heard in a long time … a very long time.
I loved his column. The Times and Los Angeles itself lost something significant when he retired or died (I forget which). The distinctive voice of an era. Akin to Mike Royko of Chicago or Herb Caen in SF. A different tone than either, but LA’s tone was different than those cities back then too.
Just three blocks in and someplace between Playa Del Rey and PV estates? Damn, a man can’t go wrong living there.
Shame about the gloom. That was one thing that got on my nerves a bit. Not so much of a problem here most days.
Thanks for the nostalgia trip.
Back to the OP, we all still don’t don’t know even roughly when he’s going to Disneyland. Next week, next month, and 4 months from now have different answers. I hope he’ll return to the thread. IIRC he lives in the Bay Area.
Yeah. He might me planning a trip in “No-Sky July” or “Fogust”
Or Floodxxxber. Which is all 4 of the “ember/ober” months.
Next week. And the thread wasn’t really intended to be about Disneyland per se, but more about how odd it seemed that four different weather apps/sites had different forecasts and different reporting of current conditions, especially if it’s all sourced from NWS. I can understand different opinions or educated guesses for 10-day forecasts, but to have a nearly ten degree variance on what the temperature is at “now” is weird
And yes, I’m up in the Bay Area where we are also in June Gloom after a month of May Gray. In a couple months, we’ll have Firetembertober.
Yes, exactly. He explained L.A. in a way that rang true for a native. I think he might have died before he retired, but I don’t remember exactly. Do you remember Matt Weinstock? He had a column, too, that I read regularly. But I liked Jack Smith best. Even as a kid, I could read his columns and be entertained.
I’ve never lived more than 6 miles inland, so I’m used to the grey. I don’t mind it, but it’s been especially long hanging on this year.
Matt Weinstock does not ring a bell for me. I just looked him up and he was with the Times from 1961 until his death in 1970. As a kid I had started reading at least some of the Times beyond the comics 3-4 years before he died, but I can’t recall ever knowing his byline.
Today ought to be about the first day of the OP’s SoCal trip. I hope we get an after action report.
Wx was as expected. June Gloom with a minor bit of light sprinkles Sunday evening. For us, at least, if the temps were perhaps five degrees higher, we’d have been able to go without jackets at night. But that’s why we always get a locker - stash jackets, sunscreen, etc. in the morning, maybe wander past at around 1-2 PM for another spritz of sunscreen, then get jackets once the sun goes away and the breeze kicks up.