Why does weather.com give 10-day forecasts?

Question

If they are rarely accurate after the 2nd or 3rd day.

Don't they have better technology to do the forecasting than they used to?

Answer 1

Well sometimes you  can see what the weather will be based on trends.

Although its very hard to predict what will happen as far as clouds, and rain, if you see an upward trend in temps-- often times that is accurate.

Answer 2

I wish I knew the answer also lol - their forecast changes basically everyday so the 10 day one means absolutely nothing to me....

Answer 3

actually no we don't have better tech than that

Weather prediction is one of the most difficult things to do

3 day is about as good as they can get

they do 10 day for the sake of media and that's about it. If you watch they revise the 10 day all the time

They can give an idea of the month but that is just a guess based on historical records and averages.

We are better at predicting were a weather system will go and what its effects will most likely be like but out pass 3 days there are just way to many factors..

The old adage of a butterfly flapping its wings here causes a Drought in Africa is kind of true.

The smallest things affect weather in ways we just don't get yet.

Answer 4

Thats media for you.

Its just to get the customers satisfied, because if you give weather for 2 days and someone is traveling to a different location for a week, he/she will not be happy with the small amount of data, so they give 10 days even if its all wrong.

I normally find that even next days weather prediction is wrong, sometimes they say current condition "rain" and its bright sunny with not a cloud in the sky.

But if they says "oh forget it, we can't predict this" they'll be out of business, and funny thing is that I know they suck at it but I still visit their site to check the next 10 days weather :D.

Answer 5

The weather predictions are based on past patterns observed. The farther to the future the meteorologist makes a prediction, the less accurate. Even the 10-day forecast sometimes proves to be quite inaccurate.