eli5 What does exactly the minimum temperature that we see in the daily weather forecast mean? Is it calculated using temperatures observed during the whole night? Meaning from 00:00am to 11:59pm or to the sunrise of the following day?

Question

eli5 What does exactly the minimum temperature that we see in the daily weather forecast mean? Is it calculated using temperatures observed during the whole night? Meaning from 00:00am to 11:59pm or to the sunrise of the following day?

In: 3

Answer 1

At least around here, it’s the lowest temperature you’ll expect to see this calendar day, midnight to midnight.

Usually that will occur in the early morning hours shortly before sunrise, but sometimes you’ll get warm or cold fronts that push through and make the day’s weather cycle a little wacky.

If there’s some unusual weather pattern that day, the meteorologist will usually qualify the forecast with some additional explanation.

“This low temp will be exactly at midnight because we expect a warm front to come through overnight”