I wanna grow up and be a weatherperson.......

[HomerS]

I have a good friend in the Clearwater area (transplant) who feels the need to ping me when they temp here drops well below freezing so the only way I can get back is hurricane season.  I asked him if he had enough supplies for Elsa (beer for him and food for his greyhound).  This is the forecast for the hurricane.....well about 30 forecasts actually.  How many of us can go into our bosses office and show them the projected outcome for future project looking like this.....and still have a job?

Years ago, there was a local morning show that commented about one of the new stations in the area having an attractive weatherperson......they said if you are going to give me complete inaccuracy, at least give me something to look at!

[youpey]

in nj you might be surprised how many times we get a call for snow of 6-18+ inches. basically every time there is even a hint of snow. however, i think of all the times they called for it, there was only 1 or 2 times in the past 4 years or so that we got more than a few inches of snow in 1 storm.

my sister-in-law and i had a bet once because they were guaranteed to have a huge storm, i think it was like 12+ inches minimum. i told her that if it snowed more than 4 inches, i would buy her dinner. after the storm, i took a picture of a ruler in the snow and it was maybe 3 inches. 

 

could you imagine that you had a job that you were wrong 99% of the time and its widely accepted. 

 

i even recall the weather person saying "it will rain somewhere in nj tomorrow, sometime during the day" well, that is very helpful. thanks

[peter31a]

Yes, I've said the same thing many times. The one that stands out in my mind was about 10 years ago. We were having a lawn sale and the weatherman at the local t.v. station said absolutely no rain in the forecast for Saturday. Dry, dry, dry. The local radio station said the same thing. The weather network said the same thing. So, of course, I didn't bother digging any tarps out to cover stuff in case of rain. About an hour into to the sale, the skies got dark and it started to rain. I thought it must just be a quick cloud burst because there was no chance of rain. But it kept raining so there was a mad scramble to find tarps. It ended up raining for over 2+ hours! How can you get it that wrong?

[Classicgas]

Only job where you can be wrong 75% of the time and keep your job lol.

[Rob Hall]

Definitely seems to be an inexact science.  My Dad was a weatherman in the Army in WW II and spent years in Miami and the US Virgin Islands.   I remember as a kid talking with him about the different types of clouds and storm patterns.  

[Khils]

13 minutes ago, Classicgas said:

Only job where you can be wrong 75% of the time and keep your job lol.

I have to disagree!      .....you left out umpires & referees!   Lol!

[Classicgas]

Lol.

[OldTrucker]

1963 and the weather guy on the local radio station said "it's a beautiful sunny day with not a drop of rain in sight" just before the radio station went off the air as the tornado took down their tower crossed the river and did some major destruction through town and to a local college!

[HomerS]

These are the same people that told Noah "just a little rain in the morning but mostly sunny this afternoon!"

[youpey]

7 hours ago, Khils said:

I have to disagree!      .....you left out umpires & referees!   Lol!

and baseball players

[espo]

I don't think there really is any "Weather Person" anymore. They used to actually look at all the data from the weather burau and make a projection that was pretty much dead on. Now they look at three or four different computer readouts from different sources and you have to wonder if they are even for the same state. They just throw a dart at the dart board and hope for the best. When the weather wonk on TV says there isn't a chance of rain for three or more days I know to go turn off the sprinklers and make sure the gutters are clear of leaves because we're in for it.  

[BlackSheep214]

And the weather is unpredictable. Mother Nature will do what she wants. Just don’t p!$$ her off. LOLOL!

[Oldcarfan27]

I remember when the Doppler Radar was a new thing and they said it would revolutionize the news forecast accuracy. 

Guess somebody forgot to plug it in. The forecasts are just as wrong as they ever were.

Amazing how so much new technology doesn't improve the outcome. Might as well look out the window and take a guess for yourself. 

[Snake45]

I've found as good a way as any to predict the weather is to look at the map or radar, and pay attention to what's happening two states to the west. Whatever's happening there today, will be happening here tomorrow 90% of the time or more. 

[Oldcarfan27]

1 hour ago, Snake45 said:

I've found as good a way as any to predict the weather is to look at the map or radar, and pay attention to what's happening two states to the west. Whatever's happening there today, will be happening here tomorrow 90% of the time or more. 

You're hired!!! ?

[Ace-Garageguy]

4 hours ago, Snake45 said:

I've found as good a way as any to predict the weather is to look at the map or radar, and pay attention to what's happening two states to the west. Whatever's happening there today, will be happening here tomorrow 90% of the time or more. 

Kinda surprising most folks don't seem to know that...or how to look at the National Weather Service forecasts, which are generally fairly decent (for my current area, anyway).

AND, when the NWS rolled out its new-improved "live" radar (updated every few minutes, with a moving map) a few months back, it was pretty buggy, but it's getting better almost daily. Somebody with a semblance of a functioning brain can come up with a quite accurate forecast from the info available...much better than the local weather talking heads seem to be able to do.

You can SEE weather systems and storms coming (in almost real-time), and figure the ground speed and thus the local ETA of a "weather event" quite easily with just a little applied effort.

EDIT: The algorithms the NWS uses to predict weather have improved dramatically in the recent past, and quite often they can predict things like "pop-up" thunderstorms that don't show on the radar until the moment they happen. But there are so many random variables that influence weather, prediction is still at least as much art and educated guesswork as hard science.

Edited July 9, 2021 by Ace-Garageguy

[ranma]

Our local weather has been so far off it's truly sad. Last week of june there was a line of storm's that were supposed to dump near 3 inches of rain. Well that was west of here then broke to the north and south of our county only to regroup in the next few counties east of ours. 90% chance of rain , But all we got was sunshine and humid temps. Then last week same thing were supposed to get hit with near 2 inches of rain, and it did the same path the one the week before took. Mid week tis week we were supposed to get 1.79 inches of rain for all day Thursday .what we actual got for our first rain in July was less than .010 of an inch. The grass is yellowish colored, but the weeds are going bonkers!

[webestang]

Nichols Cage in 'The Weather Man"......

“I don't predict it. Nobody does, 'cause i-it's just wind. It's wind. It blows all over the place! What the $#@!!”