this post was submitted on 28 Jul 2024
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No Stupid Questions

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I understand that weather on TV can’t be hyperlocally accurate. But a weather app on my phone has my exact GPS coordinates. Why can’t it tell me exactly when a rain cloud will be passing over my location?

It’s gotten to the point where I just use precipitation maps to figure out my rain chances for the day.

The hourly forecast is mostly useless because it’s not a chance % but a % of the area that will be raining.

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[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 56 points 1 month ago (11 children)

I am a pilot and flight instructor. I took a full year of meteorology at ERAU. Most weather forecast products presented to the general public are completely worthless, and we really should run "AccuWeather" out of business.

The temperature number they show you for what it is "now" was probably taken by the AWOS at the closest municipal airport to your location. If you've ever noticed like a car GPS reporting weather from three towns over and not the one you're in right now, it's because the town you're in right now doesn't have a nearby airport or it doesn't have an AWOS.

10-day forecasts are generated by tarot cards and have no basis in reality. Actual aviation weather forecasts seldom reach out beyond 24 hours.

Your best bet for getting a complete understanding of the weather is to start by looking at the GOES satellite imagery, ie actually look at the Earth from geosynchronous orbit and look at the clouds. You know those maps with the blue lines with triangles on them and red lines with half circles and big blue Hs and big red Ls? Those are called Prognostic charts, those map where high and low pressure systems and fronts are. Look at one of those and compare them to the satellite images. Then look at Doppler radar imagery, which shows where precipitation is. Look at what it's been doing for the last few hours, and then you can get a good sense of generally what the weather is going to do in the next few hours. Beyond that, not even God knows because the prick hasn't decided yet.

[–] ABasilPlant@lemmy.world 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Just out of curiosity, why do you dislike AccuWeather?

[–] captain_aggravated@sh.itjust.works 6 points 1 month ago (1 children)

My main beef with them is they take data from the public National Weather Service and package it for profit, and they're backing proposed legislation that would prevent the NWS from distributing their weather data directly to the public.

Other than that, most of what AccuWeather does is make the pretty weather maps for the TV stations, and most of the way they make them pretty is by making them less accurate, complete and precise. To a pilot, for whom weather information is a critical safety tool, an AccuWeather product is a bit like a traffic light covered in a half inch thick layer of Spongebob stickers.

The NWS is already trying to measure and predict the giant ball of chaos that is the Earth's atmosphere with probably fewer tools than they'd like, and AccuWeather takes that data and makes it worse so that it's prettier for TV.

In conclusion, fuck AccuWeather.

[–] ABasilPlant@lemmy.world 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

Thank you for your answer :D! I'll use the equivalent of your national weather service henceforth.

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