I understand that weather on TV can’t be hyperlocally accurate. But a weather app on my phone has my exact GPS coordinates. Why can’t it tell me exactly when a rain cloud will be passing over my location?

It’s gotten to the point where I just use precipitation maps to figure out my rain chances for the day.

The hourly forecast is mostly useless because it’s not a chance % but a % of the area that will be raining.

  • givesomefucks@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    25
    arrow-down
    12
    ·
    3 months ago

    But a weather app on my phone has my exact GPS coordinates. Why can’t it tell me exactly when a rain cloud will be passing over my location?

    Because they’ve never been able to do that…

    When they say “50% chance of rain”, it doesn’t meant there’s a 50/50 chance it rains where you’re located

    It’s that for the broadcast area, about half is gonna get rain.

      • WolfLink@sh.itjust.works
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        13
        ·
        edit-2
        3 months ago

        Key word “in the given forecast area”.

        The statement “there’s a 40% chance of rain at any given point at any given time in the forecast area/period” is an average over both area and time.

        Many different actual distributions of rain could result in that average, including a 100% chance of it raining 100% of the time in 40% of the are or a 40% chance of it raining in 100% of the time in 100% of the area, and a 100% chance of it raining 40% of the time in 100% of the area. Real distributions are typically messier than that.

          • kitnaht@lemmy.world
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            3
            arrow-down
            19
            ·
            edit-2
            3 months ago

            Reading Snopes will give you plenty. Read the articles - and a lot of them use weasel-wording to push the result they want.

            I don’t have the exact article on hand at the moment, but an example would be someone claiming that clear-cutting 1000 acres of trees would destroy [X]^3 of CO2 reduction; and then Snopes will “fact check” it by saying they aren’t cutting down 1000 acres of trees this year. Often times they’ll ‘debunk’ something that sounds like the claim, but isn’t the actual claim.

        • linearchaos@lemmy.world
          link
          fedilink
          English
          arrow-up
          6
          ·
          3 months ago

          yeah, never mind the references in the article where they pointed out the evidence for their conclusions. :P

    • Pasta Dental@sh.itjust.works
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      7
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      3 months ago

      It’s that for the broadcast area, about half is gonna get rain.

      Isn’t that virtually the same thing as a 50% chance of rain at my position though?

    • criticon@lemmy.ca
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      3 months ago

      No it doesn’t, it means that under those conditions, about 50% of the times it has rained in that area