I’m talking about information displayed on different weather websites. One will say that there’s a very high chance of rain in a place at a certain hour, for multiple hours, and another will say that there will be just some light rain in the first hour, then it will be dry/sunny.
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No. Not everyone uses the same data, although data is shared across agencies. No, not everyone uses the same science, although the science is shared across agencies. But, there are two other things to consider, as well: 1) even with the same data and the same science, 2 different models will give 2 different results, and any given website/page/app *might* be using its own model, or they might just be passing along gov-issued data, but even in government agencies, different models are used, so are they sourcing the raw data or the post-modeling data when they pass it to you? And 2) predicting the future is very, very hard. The further in the future you’re trying to predict, the harder it becomes. That’s why forecasts are fairly precise an hour from now, but very vague 2 weeks out. And even making predictions for a month from now or a year from now just isn’t done in meteorology. Anything beyond about 3-4 weeks is _usually_ the province of climatology, a completely separate science of attempting to predict the future.
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