Sunday, August 23, 2009

The problem with those on-line weather forecasts

Say I want to know if it will rain this afternoon between 2 and 5 pm, and the link says 30% for each of the three one-hour segments. Without knowing anything about the correlation, how am I supposed to plan?

There seems to be no way of telling where the chance of rain, for the entire period between 2 and 5 pm, falls between the polar answers of 30% and 65.7%.

Perhaps I'm over-thinking this (or failing to look at the forecast for the day as a whole).

1 comment:

  1. This is what weather maps and radar maps are for! 30% chance of rain says that there are weather patterns cutting through which will affect 30% of land areas with rain. Are you in the path? Gotta check the map, and guess!

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