Not sure about you guys, but I've noticed a substantial decline in the accuracy of local weather forecasting since March... which I blame on the Wuhan virus. Not meant to be another thread on that subject, which has been beaten to death, rather whether your local weather forecasters have been horrible as well.

I started tracking the accuracy of weather.com and the local news channels about 3 weeks ago (in the mid-Atlantic) on whether they could get rain versus shine right within 18 hours (the night before). What should be 98% accuracy has dropped to 62% and in the last four days, the weather forecasted high temp has been off by 5 to 7 degrees per day... and those temps were predicted the mornings thereof.

I'm beginning to suspect that the national weather service, Accuweather and the like have skeleton crews and the data feeds into various weather outlet channels are not up to snuff. It's so bad that sticking one's thumb out the window for the next day's weather prediction is almost as accurate.

Curious what your observations have been.

The models need upper air data to complete the grids and most of these are provided by aircraft. That's why the GFS used to be called the Aviation model. With the 95% drop in air travel, there is a corresponding drop in the data they can put into the models, so they just use whatever data looks good.

A 60% chance of rain is forecast by five weathermen sitting at a bar and three of them think it might rain. Given that the bars are closed, it's one guy tossing a coin five times.

Partly cloudy with a chance of rain.
I've never known weather forecasting to be particularly accurate in the best of times.
They should call the profession an art rather than science.

Look at this amazing map to see why.

https://www.ventusky.com/?p=9;-92;2&l=satellite

I don't know, they are always spot on around here. Here is a typical example of a weather forecast.

" it's going to start out in record cold, with a chance of frost maybe snow. Warming up in to the 90's with a chance of thunderstorms, maybe a tornado watch. Dew points at 80°."

"Let's look at the 5 day forecast, more record cold and highs in the 90's, a chance of drought with flash flooding, stay tuned for my prediction of heavy snow next week ".

Nope, always spot on here.


ARman

I've found the fat guy, John Gumm, is usually wrong. The problem being he works most evenings and that's when I'm watching. If he guesses something, you know no more than before he started. The Weather Babe, Erica Collura, is so much more pleasurable to watch there is just no competition. Yes, I'm a male chauvinist pig, and I don't care.

On days when I've got something to do and want to catch the weather on TV, if I see the fat guy on, I just turn the TV off. I'm better off with no forecast that a wrong one.