this post was submitted on 25 Dec 2025
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[–] Thorry@feddit.org 33 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

I don't know where you live, but where I live weather reports have gotten insanely accurate over my lifetime. From just a straight up guess in the 80s, to almost perfect temperature predictions within half a degree C and shower forecasts accurate to hours or even sub-hour. This is partly because of much more and better data and partly because of better models to analyse that data. Of course the predictions get worse the further into the future you try to look, as the weather is a chaotic system, meaning very small variables can have a huge effect on the output. Constraining those variables is hard or even impossible, thus constraining the end result is hard and basically impossible.

But another thing often overlooked is the communication around the weather which has greatly improved. From a simple map with a few icons and a short story, to full on live satellite feeds to our phones. I can open up an app and get extremely accurate live weather data. But the way the story is told is also much more nuanced. Instead of saying this is what the weather is going to be where you live, they explain about a front between two pressure areas. Depending on how those fronts develop you can be on either side of the line and that means you get rain. They explain this in the weather report and you can see the development in real time on a map in the app. So when its predicted to rain a day in advance, but it doesn't, you can see the front shifted a bit and missed you, so you can understand why the prediction was "wrong".

Alas a lot of people don't want to take the time to actually learn about those things, even though it's super easy these days. They just like to complain when the weather is bad, which is a pretty human thing to do. But sometimes I get pretty annoyed, for example some time ago there was a huge wind storm, which was pretty dangerous. Alerts were sent out for people not to be outside during some hours, as it might get dangerous. Then you get the flood of people saying those alerts are bogus and they'll do what they want, it's just a bit of wind, who cares? Or them shouting they went out during that time and it was totally fine, just overblown hysterics. At the same time you read in the news about someone who ignored the alert, went for a walk with his dog in a park, the wind knocked off a big branch which fell on his head and killed the man. Then everyone is all sad and outraged, how could this happen.

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 20 points 4 hours ago (2 children)

It bugs me when people complain about weather forecast inaccuracies. They're pretty accurate overall. Even when they're not perfect, I like to ask people, "What other job involves predicting the future and gets it right as often as they do?" Meteorologists are human, they're not magic.

There seems to be this pervasive and ignorant idea that just because advanced technology exists, literally everything should be possible. From expecting a perfect forecast, to wondering why blind people still exist. (I once dated someone with ocular albinism. The source of his blindness was a deficit of melanin production in his retina. There is no surgery to fix that, but even grown adults would ask, "Why can't he just get Lasik?" I mean, where to even start...)

[–] MotoAsh@piefed.social 1 points 1 hour ago

It's what happens when they don't know the first thing about the technology or how it solves a problem. Ignorance is rampant and it is very sad to see.

[–] Septian@lemmy.zip 4 points 2 hours ago

https://www.startpage.com/av/proxy-image?piurl=https%3A%2F%2Ftse4.mm.bing.net%2Fth%2Fid%2FOIP.jC52jjQnoxcQVERXNWnXLwHaDg%3Fpid%3DApi&sp=1766676135T84a90782420127bfcca174ff887d2e8a98f98b845243704ca7b4943087b5061f These are the graphs meteorologists have to interpret. This is after models have produced the data (which includes fourth order Runge-Kutta error correction differential equations) and interpreted it into a comprehensible form. Anybody working in weather sciences is a magician in every practical way, so far as I'm concerned. I worked an internship doing some of this a while back and came away wildly impressed with the systems and knowledge required to even try to guess how weather will behave over a day, much less a week.

[–] Gnugit@aussie.zone 11 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

He told me it would be 43°c today but it was only 36°c!

[–] Whats_your_reasoning@lemmy.world 10 points 4 hours ago

I would consider that a relief, tbh. Now if it were the other way around...

[–] ynthrepic@lemmy.world 3 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago)

Guessing you live in NZ... Can't remember the last dry Christmas.

[–] Peacock@lemmy.zip 4 points 4 hours ago