Weather forecasts have come a long way over the past couple of decades. Meteorologists can give you a deadly accurate five-day forecast today, when forecasting the weather beyond a day was a feat 30 years ago. Forecasts today are accurate to a fault: people expect too much, and get angry and disappointed when their friendly local weatherperson can’t deliver.
Do you get your weather from a weather app? The number of weather apps available for smartphones and tablets grows by the day, but they're not all equal. Your weather app likely sucks—in fact, some apps are so wrong that you're better off looking out the window. Here's how to remedy the situation.
People lie. People say they'll do one thing and then do another. People have free will. Predicting what people will do is harder than predicting the weather. Those who religiously track political polling found this out the hard way last night.
Weather Underground (or "Wunderground") recently launched a campaign to tout their top-of-the-heap forecast accuracy compared other private weather companies. And in classic marketing form, they distorted the hell out of the graph to drive home their point.
Check out this great read from Brad Panovich today on the accuracy of meteorologists. A tornado warning accuracy rate of 70% and a 24-hour forecast accuracy of 94% makes meteorologists more accurate in their field, on average, than doctors who make cancer diagnoses and some professional athletes (again, on average).
