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Re:New Weather Service supercomputer faces chaos by e0m on Saturday January 31, 2015 @11:54PM (#8979210)
As explained well by Nate Silver's "Signal and the Noise", when the weather forecast model says a 50% chance of rain, that doesn't mean it "might" rain, that means that in 50.001293% of millions of simulations precipitation above some threshold developed in the spot in question.

A news station can't get away with saying 50% though. The public assumes that's a cop-out answer. As such they will say 60% even if the real number is 50%. They will never say 40%. Better to seem over-prepared then rain on you when it wasn't supposed to.

Even if we had the perfect computer, at the end of the day it's got to get to your average person through a local news weather reporter.

Re:New Weather Service supercomputer faces chaos by ianlevesque on Sunday February 01, 2015 @04:29AM (#8979546)
> Even if we had the perfect computer, at the end of the day it's got to get to your average person through a local news weather reporter.

An average person maybe, but not us if you use Dark Sky for iOS or its web equivalent http://forecast.io/

I'm simplifying but it essentially plugs your GPS coordinates into a weather model and gives you the output.

Re:New Weather Service supercomputer faces chaos by batbomb on Sunday February 01, 2015 @10:26AM (#8980171)
I have to say I was using a feature like this on the NOAA site well before there was an App Store or .io domains.