#weather

Why Forecasting Rain is So DifficultMinuteEarth explains why meteorologists are often wrong about rain. I think that frames the question as if we expect weather forecasters to be right all the time. Speaking for myself, I find them to be astonishingly accurate compared to how the weather forecast was treated, say, 50 years ago. Back then, a forecast of rain meant there was a possibility, but you may as well flip a coin. Now I can pull up a website and see where it's raining on a map, and the forecast for the next few days is usually pretty spot on. In other words, we can't expect weather forecasters to be 100% right all the time. Please adjust your expectations. Okay, that being said, MinuteEarth explains why some types of rain are harder to predict than others. This video is only three minutes long; the rest is an ad. -via Geeks Are Sexy#weather #rain #weatherforecast

How Does One Officially Measure Snow?A couple of weeks ago, my area had snow all day and all night, and in the morning I took a ruler out and jammed it onto the deck. Six inches. I did the same with the railing, also six inches. It melted, but a week later it was eight inches deep. That's good enough for me, but it isn't quite accurate enough the National Weather Service. The NWS uses a network of volunteer weather observers across the country, around 8,700 of them, to report on local weather conditions, including snowfall and snow depth when the occasion calls for it. And they have rules for measuring snow. You should have the right place to measure snowfall, like a snow board, which should be measured and cleared often, but not too often. Snow depth is different, because it's the accumulation of snowfall and should be an average of measurements from different places, and will be affected by melting, compacting, and liquid precipitation.Snow depth is like the sum of individual snowfalls, if one assumes no sublimation—snow turning into water vapor—or melting from the first snowfall until now. That assumption would almost always be wrong, of course. But if you suspend reality for a moment, the depth will still never exceed the sum of all snowfalls because snow is compressible. So, two 10.5-inch (27-centimeter) snowfalls may accumulate to a depth of only 17 inches (43 cm).It’s the compressibility of snow that causes the greatest consternation with snowfall measurement. Snowfall is the amount of snow that accumulates during a given time, usually a 24-hour period. In a perfect world, this 24-hour period would end at midnight, but the vast majority of National Weather Service cooperative observers take their daily observation in the morning.So it's a lot more complicated than just sticking a ruler into your yard. Learn how the NWS volunteers measure snowfall and snow depth at Atlas Obscura. You may be inspired to become a volunteer weather watcher yourself!#snow #weather #snowfall #NationalWeatherService

It's Not Your Imagination: Weather is Worse at the MallYou go in the mall to shop without a coat or umbrella because it's a nice day, then you come out carrying bags of stuff you just bought and have to run through a rainstorm a half-mile to your car. It's not just because you forgot your coat. There's real science going on here.

Windy Is A Beautiful Weather Forecast Website For EveryoneWouldn’t it be nice if you could just look at the current weather condition whenever and wherever you are? Ivor probably thought the same thing when he founded Windyty in 2014. He loves to fly kites, and he is a helicopter and jet pilot, after all.As someone who sought weather information constantly, and as someone who had a passion for coding, Ivor decided to code the website in 2014 as a pet project, with the goal of creating a weather forecasting website that is “small and fast to be accessible in the most remote locations.”Throughout the years, the Windyty not only grew as a team; it also became more accurate in forecasting, thanks to the tools, models, and satellites the team would install along the way. And in 2017, Windyty became what we now know it today: Windy.com.Visit the site by clicking here! (Image Credit: Windy.com)#Meteorology #Weather #WeatherForecasting #Programming #Satellite #METAR

The Bootleg Wildfire in Oregon is So Large It's Creating Its Own WeatherThe Bootleg fire in Oregon, which has been burning since July 6, has burnt more than 606 square miles - an area larger than Los Angeles. The fire has now become so intense that it has created its own weather.A satellite image posted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration showed the tremendous amount of smoke that the fire generated.Fire officials noted that the Bootleg fire has shown “aggressive surface spread with pyrocumulus development.”  Pyrocumulous clouds or flammagenitus clouds are formed by intense heating of the air from the surface due to volcanic eruptions or forest fires. The intense heat causes the air mass to rise, then moistures to condense on ash particles essentially becoming their own thunderstorms, complete with lightning and strong gusts of wind.The fire is "so large and generating so much energy and extreme heat that it's changing the weather," Marcus Kauffman said to CNN. "Normally, the weather predicts what the fire will do. In this case, the fire is predicting what the weather will do."#fire #wildfire #smoke #cloud #PyrocumulousCloud #FlammagenitusCloud #ForestFire #BootlegFire #weather