Re:Advances in Weather Prediction
by maxerickson on Sunday April 28, 2019 @10:29PM
(#19775392)
Corruption, or so.
There was almost legislation to stop them from distributing data to the public directly, because then companies can make more money doing it.
Also check out IEMBot for live (immediate) access to raw NWS products [1]. It should be noted that the scientific discussions are exactly that - while quite valuable, it can take some effort to become familiar with the abbreviations and raw weather science.
Interesting... do you see the NWS forecasts being more accurate then Weather.com/Weather Underground? It always felt to me like the former was (basically/effectively) a low-pass-filtered version of the latter, not actually any more accurate, but I have't really compared them that carefully.
The NWS produces expert commentary (aka "forecaster's discussion") that can explain the deviations from forecasted weather. For example, there is a stalled weak cold front over the US right now. Many areas are getting variants of "Though not currently included in our forecast, very minor rain chances could return on Wednesday with models indicating some eastward movement of the ridge and an increase in PWAT values" based on the underlying uncertainty behind where exactly this frontal system will stall out.
Its amazing how far we have come in weather prediction. A few decades ago, 5-day forecasts did not exist and now we get 10-day forecasts that are reliable enough that we take it for granted.
In my experience, nothing beats getting the forecast straight from the horses mouth (NWS that is). Some companies are notorious for producing 30+ day forecasts, which cant have any meaningful levels of skill.
I never understood why NOAA/NWS didnt just create their own mobile app. I use Wx[0], which parses NWS data directly and can be found on f-droid.
[0] https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx