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I have lived in California for 36 years, 22 in SoCal and 14 in NorCal and I've noticed a trend that I find deeply disturbing: weather forecasts seem to be much

by lisper 2y ago

I have lived in California for 36 years, 22 in SoCal and 14 in NorCal and I've noticed a trend that I find deeply disturbing: weather forecasts seem to be much less reliable now than they used to be. Before moving to California I lived on the east coast and the weather forecasts were generally unreliable, so I was really struck by how predictable the weather in California was, and how accurate the forecasts were. Rain began and ended when it was predicted to within a couple of hours. The temperature was within a few degrees of what it was predicted to be. And the window of predictability went out 5+ days. Nowadays that has all changed. Forecast rain fails to materialize. Heat waves come out of nowhere and last much longer and are much more intense than they are forecast to be. Temperatures at my house regularly go 10 degrees above what is predicted, and regularly hit temperatures that would have been extremely anomalous when we first moved here. This is all anecdotal. I haven't been keeping records, and I haven't done the math. It's possible that this is all confirmation bias or bad memory at work. But damn, it sure seems like a real phenomenon, and the most likely explanation is that the models were trained on data that don't reflect current conditions because of climate change. The most striking thing about this is the speed with which things are changing. 36 years is nothing on what should be geologic time scales. I shudder to think what the future holds.

rapjr9 2y ago
I've seen something similar happen and think I figured out the reason. Weather forecasts in my area were very accurate for decades, then they got much worse. They were off in timing for events, and incorrect about whether rain was going to fall or not. Then I realized that the change happened around the time the local nuclear power plant was shut down. The plant had been funding a local weather station and weather radio station as part of government requirements to provide early warning of problems to citizens. When the plant shut down the weather station went with it. So NOAA was no longer getting accurate data from this area and the forecasts were off because of that. I've been thinking of setting up my own station and linking it into the public data to see if that makes forecasts get more accurate.

by lisper 2y ago

rapjr9 2y ago

I've seen something similar happen and think I figured out the reason. Weather forecasts in my area were very accurate for decades, then they got much worse. They were off in timing for events, and incorrect about whether rain was going to fall or not. Then I realized that the change happened around the time the local nuclear power plant was shut down. The plant had been funding a local weather station and weather radio station as part of government requirements to provide early warning of problems to citizens. When the plant shut down the weather station went with it. So NOAA was no longer getting accurate data from this area and the forecasts were off because of that. I've been thinking of setting up my own station and linking it into the public data to see if that makes forecasts get more accurate.