fj12ryder wrote:
But you're assuming that the weather apps are any more accurate than the weather people putting them out there. And so far weather forecasting is right up there with water witching, and reading tea leaves as far as accuracy is concerned.
I mean I can see you check out your apps and they say a big storm is on the way, so you cancel your climb, hike, cookout, whatever. Then it's "Oops, sorry we were wrong, the storm fizzled out."
You can't predict the weather with absolutes. We talk about weather in terms of probabilities. If the weather forecast calls for a 60% chance of scattered showers during the day, that's not very useful information to me.
What these apps do is completely different. Yes, they do show you the forecast for the day, but, more importantly, they look at the radar and the direction of storms heading your way. When I get an alert that rain will begin soon, it means that it is A) Currently raining nearby and B) that storm is heading in my direction and will pass overhead in a few minutes.
Is it 100% accurate? No. The storm could fizzle out by the time it reaches me or the wind may shift, etc. But it's much more useful information than the general probabilities they provide on the news. Furthermore, I can simply pull up the app and look at the high resolution radar videos and make my own predictions.
Sometimes, I'll look at my app and see storms for hundreds of miles all around me. It's easy to deduce that it will rain for much of the day or along my route. Other times, I'll look and see a tiny group of clouds that will soon pass by. In that case, I'll just wait it out.
To me, these apps bring weather forecasting into a useful and actionable pursuit. It's very good now and can only get better with development and more advanced algorithms.
