http://jimbyrnekcoyweatherman.weebly.com/blog/why-do-weather-forecasts-still-get-it-wrong

1. BLOGS..
5/7/2018
WHY DO
WEATHER
FORECASTS
STILL GET IT
Despite its radical bene t to humankind, meteorology still attracts criticism and remains the butt of jokes,
mostly because its weather predictions could go wrong. Even as seasoned weather forecasters could announce
a 100 percent chance of rain in a city, it wouldn’t rain at all afterwards!
To be fair, weather forecasting has signi cantly improved in the last 20 years or so. Experts are much better
equipped in providing advanced warnings of severe weather events, doubling the lead times when it comes to
tornado warnings, and offering people about 40 more minutes to escape ash oods.
JIM BYRNE KCOY WEATHERM AN (/)MENU

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Image source: WhyFiles.org (https://why les.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/09/hurricane_paths.jpg)
In addition, accurate weather forecasting will depend on how many eyes are on the sky. More than 11,000
observation stations across the world, for instance, take hourly measurements of temperature, humidity, air
pressure, and wind speed and direction. Meteorologists are tasked to interpret computer-generated forecasts,
comparing among different mathematical models and interpreting the amount of real-time data coming from

3. the ground.
In reality, con icting predictive models may result in contrasting views. Pinning down the exact location of a
weather event, too, can be notoriously dif cult. Weather prediction tools monitoring vital weather signs are far
from perfectly accurate.
Image source: InvestingCaffeine.com (https://sidoxia. les.wordpress.com/2011/01/weatherman-ii.jpg)
But count on the whole science to improve over time, as witnessed the past decades. Supercomputers and
other advanced technological tools, after all, are lending a hand in cranking out the calculations to reduce or
eliminate guesswork. Keep in mind, though, that predicting the future will be sorely dif cult not just for
meteorologists, but for humankind as a whole.

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Jim Byrne (https://www.linkedin.com/in/jbweather805/) is a consulting meteorologist at the Weather Channel
program “So you think you’d survive.” An alumnus of San Jose State University, he had also been the chief
meteorologist for KCOY CBS-12 and a freelance weekend meteorologist at NBC Bay Area. Read more about his work
on this page (https://sites.google.com/site/jimbyrnekcoyweatherman/).

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