Why does my weatherman suck?

Factual Questions
21

CNote - read my post again. Was steering you AWAY from 11 :slight_smile: I prefer 5 myself, but also read the back page of the metro from the Strib. Then I split the difference :slight_smile:

As to your OP…

Worse compared to what?

50 years ago this November several dozen Minnesotans died because the weather started off in the 60’s and, in a matter of hours, turned into a raging blizzard. Duck hunters went out in light jackets, women went to work wearing open toed shoes. They didn’t have a chance.

I’m too lazy to look up the year right now, but when that hurricane hit Galveston, TX, killing hundreds, no one in town knew what was coming.

Forecasting ANYTHING is hard, and meteorology is not an exact science. The forecasters rely heavily on previous models and intuition. 1+1 may equal 2, but cold front A and warm front B often add up to 15. OK, bad analogy, but you get my drift.

The fact remains that 24 hour forecasts are 80% accurate. Yeah, the storms might break out 50 miles from where they were predicted, but that’s still pretty darn close. 48 hour forecasts are about 60% accurate. Anything further out is flaky (I’m pulling this info from an old Earth Science text book).

ZENBEAM…

From CA to MI, eh? Assuming (probably incorrectly) that your from SoCal, you went from a forecast that was set permanently at 70 and sunny to a place where weather changes on a nearly hourly basis.

Ditto for…
MADD1…

If you’re from SoFlo it was sunny and 60-80 in winter, scattered showers and 70-90 in summer. If you’re from the Orlando area, that means the forecaster would tell you that it was going to rain between 3 and 5. How hard is that to predict?

Midwestern weather is flaky; as they say, if you don’t like it, wait a few minutes - it’ll change.

But I’ll take wishy-washy forecasting over bad or no forecasting any day of the week.

22

Thanks sandyr.

What he/she said. You have to look at a LONG period (probably at least a year) to figure out if someone is getting better or worse. Taking into psychological account about how the bad forecasts are remembered WAY more than the good ones, it may seem that they are getting worse, where in fact they aren’t.

If they are getting worse, as I mentioned above, I have no idea why. They SHOULD be getting better, but if they aren’t, I don’t know why.

23

Ooops. Sorry, can’t add when I’m drinking :slight_smile:

60 years ago this November, not 50. Armistice Day Blizzard, 11 November 1940. Grampa had a book on it and was fairly interesting, if sometimes horrid, reading.

I’m a she, BTW…

24

Nope, Silicon Valley. And not SF, where it’s always in the 60’s, it seems. But the weather in MI is more variable than in the SV.

The thing was, when I went back there, they were complaining about the poor forecasting, which I didn’t recall from when I lived there. Perhaps I just happened to talk about the weather with someone who always thought the forecasting was poor.

25

When I was in the Cleveland area, there were 4 channels and one of them, the weatherperson was always wrong. They were usually off by at least 5 degrees or more, and always on the high side. So here I’d think it would be warm out in December, but nope, the other 3, who were quite close in predictions, were right.
I love the new “doppler” radar. In the winter, they would interrupt a program as soon as therre was a cloud on the horizon, predicitng exactly where it was, where it was moving, how fast. Then, after all that, it was nothing; not even a drop. Anti-climactic.
I think they were playing with their new “toy” of radar detection.

26

Vanilla: I don’t know which station you’re referring to, but the only decent weatherperson in Cleveland, as any Clevelander knows, is Dick Goddard. Everyone else was always so paralyzed by their instruments, that they forgot how to just look up :slight_smile:

Myself, if I want to know the weather in any given place, I ask an old local with arthritis… The forcast is likely to be as good or better, and the color commentary is more interesting.

27

Chronos, Fox 19 was the sucky weather channel.
Yep, Dick Goddard rocks! I remember him telling, with a totally straight face, about the record high that day, which was in 1897. He said, it was so hot, the corn in the fields popped; the cows thought it was snowing and some of them froze to death.
I’m sure many viewers didn’t even catch that.
Classic.

28

If you are that dissapointed in your local meteorologist, try moving to Oklahoma City. Gary England at KWTV-9 is invariably right on the money. He is the Edward R. Murrow of TV weathermen (minus the cigarette). If he says the sky is falling, your a** had better be heading underground.

Seriously, read the bio and then call your local TV station and ask why they don’t have someone half that good. If enough people call in and demand a compentent meteorologist be hired, they’ll eventually get the message and quit hiring talking heads. Failing that, you could learn how to get the forecast from you local airport. You’ll get a solid, accurate (albeit somewhat general) forecast without all the fluff. Aviators’ weather forecasts have to be accurate since many peoples’ lives hang in the balance of these forecasts every day.

I’d bet that half of the so-called meterologists on TV just spice up what they get from NOAA and the FAA. How hard is it to predict the weather in places like Los Angeles.