WUWT: We are constantly exposed to extended forecasts in the media and online, with predictions extending through the next month and more.
Can you rely on such predictions? Are they really worth paying attention to?
Quite honestly, probably not–and if you do consider them, do so with the knowledge that their skill is marginal at best.
Take this month (October) for example. The official NOAA Climate Prediction Forecast for October temperatures, made on Sept. 19th, was for warmer than normal conditions over the west and MUCH above normal over the southwest U.S.
What actually happened? Nearly the entire west was much colder than normal, with the northern parts MUCH, MUCH colder than normal. A miss. In fact, a big miss.
My power was out for 120 hours in October because they said there’d be high winds. Only twice out of 7 times did the wind even blow here. Thankfully we have a gas fireplace to keep us warm.
It isn’t just NOAA’s models (out of Maryland) that occasionally go awry. But many universities experience similar problems in their own independent computer forecasting. I like to track how well certain jet stream forecasts actually play out. And during the last two months, they’ve been the worst I’ve seen in many years. Sometimes, however, they’ll be quite good for an extended period, as well. No clue why.
Incidentally, there are some very good web sites out there run by universities. Here are a couple of pages I monitor which show a long range jet stream forecast:
https://a.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/wxloop.cgi?h500+/-168//
https://a.atmos.washington.edu/~ovens/wxloop.cgi?h500_xtnd+///
They can’t tell you with 100% certitude if it will rain today in your specific geographic area but know down to the degree how hot the entire planet will be 100 years from now.
The egos of these effing central planners. It’s not even ego. It’s fearmongering so you surrender control and power to them.
Locally, they hype doom and gloom weather forecasts because grocery stores are big advertisers. On the international scale, they do it to exert soft sovereignty over nations without doing so militarily.
Extended PREVIOUS weather data is also not accurate. 99% of all “scientists” stir the pot with their greasy fingers to make sure weather that has already happened doesn’t threaten their future paycheck.
Forecasts both long and short are not reliable? Next you’ll tell me that water is wet and the sun rises in the East! Where are Copernicus and Galileo when you need them!?
We had the coldest ever October in Spokane. The month started with one of the earlyist snowfalls we’ve ever had which caused many maple trees overburdened with leaves to crack and break all over town including one in my front yard which lost a large branch. It was a weirdly cold month, hopefully we won’t have a severe Winter but that remains to be seen because anything can happen and usually does.
Arthritis and bunions are the best indicators
of the weather for about 2 days ahead.
After that it’s Las Vegas odds, babe.
And The AGW crew is prognosticating 10 years out.
Gimme a break.
DJT was supposed to be out of office re predictions for the last 3 years. He also was never going to win the nomination and then never ever going to be Potus. And Hillary aka madam president was so expected to win they printed her celebratory magazine cover before the election. And don’t even get started on Obama’s March madness brackets. I think we can pretty much sack the reliability of predictions.
When I was lad, a Navy Radioman stationed at NAS Agana Guam during the Vietnam era, the aviators who landed on Guam to refuel (not much else to do there) would ask the Navy weather forecasters why they were CORRECT so much of the time. They answered: “We actually walk outside and look at the sky”
Captain Obvious is threatening to file a lawsuit over this article.
As a former Air Traffic Controller, weather is inconstant change. Even 3 days is a real guess, beyond that is like throwing darts oner your shoulder trying to hit a target behind you can’t see. Forecasters are “whether guessers”.
Red sky at night sailors delight, red sky at morning sailors take warning. What a novel concept of going outside and actually looking to see what the weather will be like. Computer models have far too many variables to usually get an accurate measurement of what the weather will be like on any given day.
Hell, The Weather Channel isn’t even getting it right anymore. Their computer app gets it wrong 90% of the time, and the “news” video clips have titles that look like they were created by someone who has English as a second language (barely). Plus, they seem to have bought in to the man made global warming crap whole heartedly.
Sad, they used to be a good weather source.
The weather service is pretty on target for about 3 days out. After that any forecast model they do is like the cone of uncertainty for hurricanes and not nearly as accurate.
Weatherman – one of only TWO jobs in the world, where you can be wrong 90% of the time, and STILL get a paycheck. 😆
“Elected democrap,” being the other one. 🙄
The Farmer’s Almanac, woolly worms, and my knees are more accurate.
They’re full of crap.
We KNOW they’re full of crap.
THEY know they’re full of crap.
But they persist in being full of crap and we persist in paying them to be full of crap.
Wobbles the mind.
izlamo delenda est …
Weather forecasting is essentially a calculated guess. Weather service employees create modeling programs for computers and create forecasts based on the results. Thing is, the modeling programs are based on calculated guesses too.
Beyond what they can see in their local radars, the weather service is simply guessing and we pay an exorbitant amount of money to support this. Other than observing and reporting trends, the real usefulness of their long range forecasts is nil.
“30% chance of rain” means that on 3 out of 10 days with similar conditions, it rained. No need to think, no need to reason, no need to know anything other than what it did previously with similar conditions.
Neither art nor science.
If I hit my thumb with a hammer – it will hurt.
DUH!
The Globaloney Climate Scam throws in a few poorly-coded computer models to buttress the lies. They can’t predict tomorrow’s weather, not because “weather isn’t climate” (climate being the sum-total of weather – as forests are the sum-total of trees), but because they can’t predict anything.
Not really their point.
izlamo delenda est …
I just rely on my Magic 8 Ball.
https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/22-old-weather-proverbs-that-are-actually-true/ .
Predicting weather more than 72 hours into the future is like trying to predict the motion of a triple pendulum.
Triple pendulum
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDU2JsgLpm4 .
WTF?
Americans are slaves today.
The US collapse is not happening on some distant planet in the distant future. The collapse is happening right now and you just need to go outside to see it.
During the Great Leap Forward in China, Chinese from the cities were sent to the countryside to farm. Birds were killed and then insects ate the crops. Officials lied about the production quotas and when millions starved to death, the government censored the news and blocked roads so that no one could escape.
Now the USA is a bankrupt warmongering police state and no one can talk about the US decline.
Soviet gulags, Nazi concentration camps, and Cambodian killing fields were real. Tyranny is real and it’s happening again.
Americans walk around in some alternate universe now thinking that the US is not declining, they are immune from the police state, liberty only benefits others, and tyranny only applies to other people.
Tyranny means that you have no choice. Do you think that you can opt-out when a black van pulls up to your house and black-clad DHS agents break down your door? Everyone using this website is on a watchlist.
By refusing to resist and staying quiet about NSA wiretapping, Americans admitted that they are just animals with no rights.
Do you really believe curfews, gun bans, checkpoints, forfeiture, the end to the right to silence, free speech bans, torture, kill lists, no fly lists, searches without warrants, private prisons, mandatory minimums, 3 strikes laws, DNA databases, CISPA, SOPA, NDAA, IMBRA, FBAR, FATCA, TSA groping, secret FISA courts, and Jade Helm don’t exist?
You can blame the elites for the US decline, but do have any responsibility at all for remaining silent?
Do you think that endless US wars, tyranny, and record debt might be related? Do think that the 1% will restore the Bill of Rights on their own? Would you trust the globalists if they said that they did?
Aren’t you just a little concerned?
has tRUTH evolved into Political News Forum?
… inquiring minds want to know!