🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3636@cod.NOSC.MIL> price@cod.NOSC.MIL (James N. Price) writes:
>In article <kpis7tINN24m@agate.berkeley.edu> jbuck@forney.berkeley.edu (Joe Buck) writes:
>>
>>Ah, but that doesn't mean they were wrong!  They said there was a 70%
>>chance of rain, which means 30% chance of no rain, right?  If it rained
>>every time they said "70% chance of rain", there'd be something wrong
>>with the forecasting.
>>
>I lived on the E. Coast for a year a while back.  It seemed that
>when their weather folks said "70% chance of rain" it meant "it
>will be raining 70% of the time."  It seems here in good ol' S.
>Calif. that the only time rain can be correctly predicted if it's
>raining right now!

In the DC metro area, where I lived for 20 years, when they say "70% chance
of rain" they mean it will 100% definitely rain over about 70% of the area.
This meant that if they predicted 40% or more chance of rain you should take
your umbrella because the chance was very high that your route would go
through a rainy area.  (It also meant that if they said 10%, and you saw a
raincloud in the distance, the fact that you'd left your wellies at home
would not be a disaster, because the 10% rain was falling way over there.)

Of course, if you grow up under that system, like I did, you never quite know
what the weather people elsewhere mean when they give percentage chances of
rain.  "... 50% chance of rain ..."  "So is it going to rain, or what?"

As far as predicting weather for CA goes, I imagine that since there isn't
much land for weather stations to sit on west of the state's western boundary
(the Pacific Ocean, for the clueless), the weather people have less to go on
than do weather people in states further east.  The broad radar pictures are
helpful, of course, but nothing is so good for tracking rainstorms as a wea-
ther station upwind of you reporting rain.


Carrie "all I get on the 'scope is seawater" Bryan
					ceb@dbrus.unify.com	x6244
|		"Never" is about six months.   -- Charlie Gibbs		      |
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