Why does my weatherman suck?

Factual Questions
1

It’s unbelievable. I live in the great state of Minnesota and the weather changes here can be quite dramatic. That’s kinda of given, but in the last couple of weeks our weatherman, doesn’t matter which channel or weatherman, mind you, hasn’t been able to even figure whats currently happening, let alone cipher what might happen two days from now. ‘Today: foggy and cool with rain.’ Turns out to be warm and sunny!

It seems that every sweeps period he gets a new flashy graphic, projected rainfall tabulator, and/or computer model which will revolutionize forecasting technology forever.

What gives? I seem to recall that they could at least get the next day right years ago, but today they can’t seem to even look out the window and tell you what’s happening now. Considering that technology, satelites, and experience should have taught them something, why are the forecasters predictions getting worse?

2

Possibly it’s just that your expectations are getting higher? You see the flashy graphics and you are led to expect miracles, but all he’s got to work with are the same old measurements of millibars.

3

Not so. I expect, or at least think, that with all the added technology, he/she should get better. Not so, they get worse. Why?

By the way, I didn’t mean to offend the opposite sex by saying ‘weatherman’. It’s just as bad with the females too…

4

Am I the only one who read the subject line and thought “Well, maybe he really wants to keep his job.”

5

I have my suspicions that La Nina (pretend that’s spelled right) has messed up weather forecasting. I moved from California to Michigan 1 1/2 years ago, and the weather forecasting seemed to go in the tank. I thought “It must be harder to predict weather coming in over land than over a more or less featureless ocean.” About a year later I went back for a visit, and they were complaining about the lousy weather forecasting. Perhaps now that La Nina is going away, predictions will get better.

It drives me nuts, though. Even though I know I can’t trust their forecasting, I end up assumng it will be correct, and end up getting burned.

6

I know we have a meteorologist around here somewhere who can explain the answer to your question more fully, but for starters, let’s correct a common fallacy:

LOTS OF TECHNOLOGY DOES NOT EQUAL UNDERSTANDING

Yes, there are lots of delightful instruments that can measure all sorts of things. But the ability to make measurements to the umpteenth decimal place is useless without conceptual models for understanding what is happening, and why. In truth, there is a great deal about weather and climate processes that are still poorly understood, if at all.

Meteorologists and their scientific kin doneed tons of measurements of various kinds for comparison to past records of weather, as well as to plug in to computer models that are used to make the forecast you hear from AccuWeather or whoever. The models aren’t perfect (far from it), but the deviation between prediction and actual weather can be used to try to figure out where the model went wrong, so that it can be tweaked to produce a better forecast. It is a labor-intensive process that will continue until our understanding of the weather and climate processes improves.

Of course, there will probably be a practical limit to how many days in advance one could predict the weather with any certainty, simply because weather and climate behave in a non-linear fashion (think chaos theory).

It’s a bummer when the forecast doesn’t work out, but the meteorologists are doing the best that they can within the bounds of current understanding and observational capability. Just try to think of yourself as being a witness to the progress of experiments in meteorological forecasting. :slight_smile:

7

There’s an El Niño and/or La Niña every 2 or 3 years anyway, and there have been for as far back as meteorological records exist. Any weatherman who says those screw up the forcasts is just making excuses-- You might as well say that you can’t make forcasts in winter. Yeah, there’s some weathermen who can’t tell you if it’s raining right now… The term is “stupidity”, and I believe you’ll find that that’s been around for as long as records have been kept, too.

Personally, I never trust any weatherman who doesn’t know how to read a wollybear.

8

If someone would just teach that damned butterfly in China to flap its wings a little more regularly, this wouldn’t be a problem.

9

Filet: I don’t subscribe to the idea that technology= absolute knowledge. Quite the contrary.

I subscribe to the idea that advanced technology leads to a better understanding of what you need to know. Not adsolute, but better.

Our local T.V. weather-people are certified in meteorology, for chrissake. They can at least look out the window and tell people what’s happening now, let alone predict tomorrow. I can’t tell you how many times they say ‘it’ll be this and expect that’ and neither is remotely close.

The point I’m trying to make here is this: if it’s raining outside right now, why can’t the weatherperson tell me that, as opposed to saying it’s sunny? Has he/she gotten so lazy because of technology that they can’t look outside? Why has technology seemed to make them worse, rather than better?

Put simply, they SUCK.

10

Cnote Chris, there really is no direct route from advanced technology to better understanding. The technological leaps and bounds we can make today proceed far faster than major breakthroughs in science - that’s my point. Most folks that I run into who say “why can’t we do X better with all that fancy equipment” (a complaint that has been voiced on this board before, actually) don’t get that point. My apologies if you do and are just venting, but I wanted to get that across to anyone reading who didn’t get it before.

BTW - are you sure your weatherpeople are actually meteorologists? That isn’t always the case, although a talking head as a weatherperson does seem to be less common now.

If you want someone to tell you what it’s doing outside right now, why not look outside yourself instead of turning on the tube to find out? :wink:

IMHO, technology hasn’t made them any worse. More visible technology and TV promotion of “Doppler 4000” or whatever they want to advertize has raised your (and others’) expectations much higher than they should be. Personally, I never expect weather forecasts to be all that accurate more than a day in advance, especially during the spring months, because I think that’s the limit of what meteorologists can reasonably do right now.

11

We have recently moved from Florida to Massachusetts (Don’t ask why). The Florida weather dudes were fairly on the money with their forecasts. However, here in Massachusetts they never get the forecast right. In fact they have this neat little ploy about that. They discuss other states! It goes like this…
“Well it rained, unexpectedly, all day today, but take a look at New York! Its very nasty in New York (Vermont, New Hampshire, Rhode Island etc.) today”

I pointed this out to my wife, who agreed it was odd. Thinking that it may be just the one station we watched the other channels as well. They all did the same thing. Anyone else notice this tactic?

12

No weatherman that I know of said that La Niña messed up the forecasts, I was just speculating that might be the case. As far as there usually being an El Niño or La Niña, my recollection is La Niña the last two years, corresponding to when I recall the weather predicting becoming bad. El Niño was the couple years before that, and then neither until you get back to 1989 for La Niña, and 1982, I think, for El Niño, both of which they knew about in retrospect. I’m hoping that, now that they have pretty pictures showing the water cooling or heating, that every year from here on out won’t be one or the other. Man that will get old fast (i.e. already).

Of course, I don’t discount the possibilities of coincidence or selective memory on my part.

13

It used to be thought that El Ninos occurred every seven to ten years or so, but lately they’ve been occurring more frequently, and that’s messed up the cycle a bit, now it may be much more frequent: 2 to 4 years. That may be because we have a greater ability to detect it now, rather than a change in the frequency of the cycle.

I think some recent El Nino years were 1997/98, 1996, 1992/93 (or 1991-1996, it depends on who you ask), 1986/87, and 1982/83. La Nina, IIRC, usually occurs the year after El Nino or for a couple years afterwards. Remind me to look up the cites for more detailed information. NOAA, of course, has some excellent information though.

Since these phenomena are still poorly understood, their implications for many parts of the world (like Minnesota) may not be well understood by meteorologists. Here in California, it’s pretty predictable: El Nino means lots of rain, La Nina very little… but again, this is more rainy days on average, so that might not help predicting the weather on a specific day.

14

Fillet said a lot of pertinent stuff. Even though technology is getting better, technology does NOT forecast the weather. You need a trained person to glean want he/she can from the forecast models. If you believed what the models said, EXACTLY, you would be in a world of hurt. This is due to some initialization errors, and model physics, and the fact that our upper-air data points (balloons) are roughly every 400km apart, and only taken twice a day! It’s a wonder we do as well as we do. (Satellite and aircraft help, but not enough). Think what it is for the rest of the planet.

Also, every season (fall, winter, etc.) has it’s own challenges to effectively forecast the weather. For instance, with fast moving systems, and more dynamics, wintertime forecasts are difficult, especially when trying to figure out the rain-snow line. In the summer, most of the synoptic models (the ones forecasters use), do not initialize convection well, and do not forecast it well. Granted, they can forecast general areas of storms, but since storms are very small (even the larger clusters are difficult to predict, according some models). This in turn leads to errors in other places. The best way to forecast is to use the models as a rough guess. Some of my friends in private firms try NOT to use the models as a forecast tool. Current conditions, and conceptual knowledge are a big key to figuring out how the future state will unravel. Granted, the models are an indespensible tool, but should not be looked at as the be all/end all. Some TV forecasters may just use the straight model guidance (I know some do), and use pretty graphics to liven it up, which may be one reason they “suck”.

All this being said, I don’t know why these TV people are screwing up. Even though the models “suck”, relatively, they are MUCH better than even only a handful of years ago. Write 'em and ask them. :wink:

Lastly, global scale events such as La Nina/El Nino have very little effect on any individual storm system. The pattern may be such that a storm may be further north than usual, or may get a large amount of rain, but La Nina, etc. affects more of the long-term aspects of weather, like a seasonal drought.

15

Viscera, is there any objective way of measuring how the accuracy of predictions might vary with current conditions? Do your predictions include any estimate of how much the real weather might vary from you predictions as you propagate forward in time? Have the predictions over the last two years been harder (either less expected accuracy, or less actual accuracy) than the next few years previous?

16

ZenBeam, I know what you’re asking. Is there any sort of statistical accuracy of these forecasts?

Well, even these have to be taken with a grain of salt. A forecaster might use a “good” forecast as +/- 5 degrees. In winter, this is a good assumption. However, in the summer, it is almost impossible to not get within 5 degrees.

This site gives the average errors for RMS (have NO clue what this is, although I could probably find out) in temperatures over the past 12 months, from days 4-7 from the initial forecast. As you can see, there is some skill involved, although there is some error.

This is the only “verification” site I can find on quick notice, although, this data is not often published.

This is the same graph I used back in a previous thread, although it is updated now.

17

This site gives HPC (Hydrological Prediction Center) forecasting skill versus MOS, which is the actual numerical output of the forecast model. It doesn’t say which model the MOS is based on, however.

50% means that the model and HPC split the forecasts. As you can see, the HPC forecasters perform better than the models almost all the time in the day 3-7 period, which just reinforces the fact that a skilled forecaster can run circles around the “guidance”.

18

Thanks Viscera. RMS probably means “Root mean square”, by the way.

19

Kare 11, right? Switch channels. Personally, I check out http://www.weather.com before I leave in the morning.

Are you in the Cities? I’m in Central MN and you KNOW the weather down there has NOTHING to do with anything else in the state. It could be pouring down rain here in St. Cloud and my parents, who live about 15 miles NW of here, get nothing. Or vice versa. My sister lives 15 miles directly north of me. They’ll get hit with something junky and neither St. Cloud nor my parents get anything.

On a side note, my grampa claims that the last time he listened to a weather forecaster he had to shovel two feet of partly cloudy off of his doorstep :slight_smile:

20

Sandyr: Ken Barlow sucks wind. Try channel 5.

Viscera, thanks for your resonse, I hope I didn’t offend you, that’s not my objective.

However, my original post stands: why are weather-people getting worse, as opposed to better?

They should be getting better right?