How can weather forecasts be so inaccurate?

Question

I always watch the weather channel and I think they only correctly predict the weather 20% of the time or so. For example, for the last couple of days they said the area where I live is supposed to have severe thunderstorms today and tomorrow, but it was completely sunny out today. They have been off nearly everyday this year. What gives?

Answer 1

quantum uncertainty, you cant know for sure the location and speed of a particle without effecting either the speed(to determine location) or location(to determine speed). at the scale of atmospheric conditions that uncertainty really starts to build up.

Answer 2

I think global warming has made the art of weather predication basically a guessing game. Sometimes it's right most times it's off. Not just the weather channel, but local as well. All the digital radars and all that just can't do it. We don't even have seasons any more in some parts of the country. I was born and raised in Massachusetts and in 1 day we had all 4 season...morning it was  85 degrees (summer), afternoon lunch time 65 degrees (spring), after school  47 degrees (fall), late night/bed time it was snowing. In one day. Have you noticed things like tornadoes and hurricanes, tsunami popping up in places they normally don't and not even during the "season". I think it's all global warming or at least related to it in some way and that makes the weather prediction...not accurate. I think they just can't do it anymore. I maybe wrong and way off but that is what I think.

Answer 3

There are just so many factors it is impossible to account for every possibility.  It kind makes you have to stop and wonder how any scientist could be so convinced as to what conditions will be like ten years from now.  Whether it is global warming or a new ice age it is just impossible to predict.  The Ecosystem of Earth is a true wonder.  No matter how extreme a pressure it put on it, it always gets back into balance.  No single factor, carbon dioxide, included, can sway that balance very far or for very long. Sure, CO2 is a greenhouse gas that can blanked the earth trapping heat but it also creates humidity causing increased cloud cover which blocks the sunlight and pretty soon you have a cooling effect.  Increase CO2 will also promote plant growth which changes CO2 into O2.

If there are too many factors to accurately predict the weather over the next five days how can we do it for a year, a decade or a century?  But people believe it.  The funny part is, the more computer power the weather service has, the more data they consider and the more convoluted the results become.  I don't know if it is actually possible to predict the weather more than three days in advance in more than a hundred square mile area with anything approaching 100% certainty.  It is a lot like letting a thousand cats out of a bag and accurately predicting where each will end up.  

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Answer 4

God likes to punk the weather people.

Answer 5

isn't it amazing?  there must be millions of dollars spent on weather equipment, and they still can't be as accurate as my cousins bunion.

Answer 6

i agree with vatot7. God controls everything on His earth!

Answer 7

because you can't control it. the weather changes every minute... every second. you have to take into account the type of front, humidity, etc. you can never predict when certain things will disappear. it's like a tornado. you can have all the signs pointing one direction but for some reason it will just change itself and go off course. i mean rain clouds just form out of nowhere depending on how the warm and cold fronts line up... it's not their fault and they do there best. that's why they always give you a percentage of whether or not they believe it is going to rain. it's never certain but they usually have a pretty good idea.

Answer 8

in briatin they said it would tip dwn all day

wen all we got was a few showers

Answer 9

they read a computer model

Answer 10

They watch the local area tv stations around them and average the answers.

Answer 11

Let's begin with rain.

When the meteorologist says there is a 50% chance of rain tomorrow, that means that if the atmospheric conditions at that time continue it could result in about half of the square miles in the area will receive some rain in the next twenty-four hours. It does NOT mean it will rain for half a day anywhere or everywhere.

Next consider "IF conditions continue..."  Weather predictions are just that...predictions.  Imagine that the atmosphere was similar to a pitcher of water which you stirred clockwise five times and then into that you dropped a small amount of red dye...then you stirred just the top of the water counterclockwise a few times and then plunged the spoon down deep into the mixture and removed it quickly. Now imagine you are an ant at the very bottom of the pitcher...when will the dye reach the ant?

Next consider what our memories are like...you remember the times the weatherperson was wrong, but do you actually remember all the times right?

Lastly, our weather patterns are constantly changing from year to year...however the last few decades have depicted some significant deviations from past years.

Oh yeah, one more thing...some weather persons aren't meteorologists and some make mistakes.

It's a wonder anyone predicts the weather accurately to any significant degree for a single person in a single place for a specific time frame. Some areas of our planet are specially situated to encounter more than average shifts in conditions, making prediction even harder.

Answer 12

In some places weather patterns can change in mere hours, I dont know where you live, but here in Minnesota we go sunny to storm, hot to cold very, very quickly.  I believe most times mother nature outpaces our technology with ease.  Most of us can only guess about weather.

Answer 13

lol do you live in new england or ca?

Answer 14

I am a very famous weatherman in my town. Probably the greatest of all weatherforcasters ever. I have never been wrong.

Answer 15

They make an educated GUESS about what MAY happen...

Answer 16

they got nothing but a thermometer and the clouds

Answer 17

Certain parts of the country are more difficult to predict than others, that's a big part of it, but a lot of it is due to bogus science.  Did you know that if you predict tomorrow to be the same as today you will be right 80% of the time?  Weather experts can't even come close to that yet.

Answer 18

weather is very unpredictable

Answer 19

Being someone who does weather forecasting for a living I can tell you that the Weather Channel, and their webpage weather.com strickly use weather models, not just any weather models, but one that their mother company designed, not one that is used by anyone else, such as the National Weather Service.  Now weather forecasting is not and will never be an exact science, the atmosphere is to fluid and ever changing for anyone to every develop a mathmatical model that can take every little thing into account.  Here is a list of other sources for you to try, maybe one of them will give you a more accurate forecast:

www.wunderground.com

www.accuweather.com

www.intellicast.com

Answer 20

God is in charge

Answer 21

There are several reasons that forecasting weather can be so difficult none of which are global warming.  

1st the mathematics involved in creating weather are very complex so when they program models they essentially  have to “dumb down” the math to get the models done in a reasonable amount of time so you can get today’s forecast and not last nights.  Models have gotten better with increased computing power but are still long ways from being perfect.  

2nd you have to realize that when weather forecasters are forecasting for your area they are trying to forecast what is going to happen in a column  of liquid (air) about 10 miles high.