Eli5: Why do weather forecasts differ so much from one site to another?

Question

Its 11:30am and I wanted to check the forecast for this afternoon. One site says it’ll be a 45% chance of rain starting at 5pm, and another site says it’ll be clear until 8pm. How can it be so different when it’s only a few hours away?

In: 1

Answer 1

also at some point you just need to acknowledge that rain is not global and there is an edge somewhere
you can have 2 forecasts for the same city – rainy and sunny
both of them can be correct