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>To be honest, and this is my opinion only, but 2-3 day forcasts, at least in my area, are horribly inaccurate. In my state, it's a common joke that being a meteorologist is the only job you can have where you can be wrong 95% of the time, and still keep your job. Meteorologists lower the quality of the data they receive. People don't want bad news. People don't want to hear that it's going to rain on their weekend. People won't tune in to hear constant bad news. So meteorologists take the positive and optimistic side. The reality of forecasting is that much of the data, models, the warnings, are all created by the NWS. The further you get from real NWS data, the lower the quality tends to be. It's like a game of telephone, except with forecasting. National forecasters like The Weather Channel utilize tons of NWS data and models, and present it in a more friendly way. Generally there is a loss of quality here (and, when you look at TWC's buzzfeed approach to weather, it's not hard to see why they might respect clicks above all else). Then, further down the pipe, away from the NWS and the actual source, away from National broadcasters, we get to local broadcasters. Once again, these guys are largely relying on upstream info, just packaging for the local audience. It's not surprising that local meteorologists provide the lowest quality forecasting, because that's not really their job to provide highly accurate forecasting. Their job is actually to keep you watching through a commercial break, so the show remains on-air. The NWS is the service whose job is it to accurately forecast. |
For example, just look at whatever near-term forecast you have handy. What are the forecast high and low temperatures for the next few days? What are the error bars on those highs and lows?
Oh, you couldn't find error bars? Yeah.