8 years ago
4
AccuWeather issues 90-day forecasts and meteorologists are not amused
The ability to throw more computer processing power at forecast models has substantially improved the ability of meteorologists to predict the weather. A recent analysis found that a modern five-day forecast is as accurate as three-day forecast was in 1995. In the last three decades, thanks largely to numerical weather prediction, the useful window of forecasting has moved out from about 7 days to 10 days.
Continue Reading
http://arstechnica.com
Join the Discussion
Accuweather isn't accurate 24 hours out. 90 days? pfft
I've always found it interesting just how unpredictable weather patterns can be. Even 10-day forecasts are only moderately accurate, and in my experience, local weathermen often end up more accurate than national data-driven weather forecasts for some reason.
I think I might want to look into this further...
I tend not to trust weather forecasts beyond the 2-3 period living in BC. There is just way too much clouds and rain for any of these 7-10 forecasts to be even remotely accurate so I couldn't imagine 90-day forecasts being taken seriously by anyone.
Ever since I learned that accuweather and weatherunderground and the likes just take NOAA data and repackage it, with the extra incentive to exaggerate or for any reason alter predictions, I decided to just get the data from the source: weather.gov.
I also love the discussion and details around their predictions. Example for today:
.SYNOPSIS....HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT WILL AGAIN RESULT IN WARM TO VERY WARM TEMPERATURES ACROSS THE REGION TODAY. A COOLING TREND IS THEN FORECAST FROM TUESDAY THROUGH FRIDAY AS A SERIES OF UPPER LEVEL SYSTEMS APPROACH THE WEST COAST. CHANCES FOR WIDESPREAD PRECIPITATION INCREASE LATE IN THE WEEK BEFORE DIMINISHING INTO THE UPCOMING WEEKEND.
There's also a decent Android app that uses NOAA data.