Why do weather forecasts sometimes fail to predict accurately?
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There are thousands of variables in the atmosphere, and meteorologists can only really guess and use models to help predict. They know what ingredients are present, what airmasses will collide etc, but they have no idea exactly what shape the weather will take until it forms.
When you see “80% chance of rain,” take that to mean that there’s an 80% chance that it will rain *somewhere near you.*
Weather forecasts aren’t for your backyard specifically, they’re for your area in general.
My area had an 80% chance of 2-3″ of rain yesterday. We had a flood watch, a tornado watch and a hazardous weather outlook all issued. All the models and all of the predictions pointed towards a big rain event, followed by possibly severe storms…
…well, all of that happened, but about 20 miles north of me. All of my neighbors were saying how wrong and stupid the weather people are, when, in reality they were *dead on with their forecast,* but the weather formed 20 miles north of us instead…and all of those folks 20 miles north of me had the *exact same forecast that I did.*
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