Eli5 How do weather forecasts differentiate whether it will remain cloudy or the clouds will lead to rain?

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How do we know that it will remain cloudy but won’t rain? Or if the clouds will surmount to any precipitation?

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Anonymous 0 Comments

Imagine you’re in a parking lot, and you see a loose shopping cart rolling toward a car. You can see the direction it is rolling, see that it isn’t slowing down very much—you make a reasonable prediction that there’s a 95% chance that cart is going to hit that car.

But then you see someone has spotted the shopping cart and is running toward it. Will they catch it in time? Hmmm, could go either way. You estimate it’s now a 50% chance the cart hits the car.

But then as the person picks up speed, it seems more obvious that they will stop the cart. Maybe a 10% chance of collision.

But then the person in unexpectedly trips, and the cart hits that car after all.

That’s basically how weather prediction works. You look at existing weather fronts and the direction they are moving, you make educated estimations of how those fronts will continue to travel and how they will interact with one another, and you keep adjusting your estimates as you get more information.

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