🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <lr6k4iw@Unify.Com>, ceb@dbrus.Unify.Com (Caroline E. Bryan) writes:
> In article <3636@cod.NOSC.MIL> price@cod.NOSC.MIL (James N. Price) writes:
>>>
>>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.

I'm sorry, but neither of these interpretations is correct.  When weather
forecasters say that there is a 70% chance of rain, they mean that under
these same weather conditions in the past, 70% of the time it rained--i.e.,
out of the last 100 days that we had equivalent temperature, pressure, cloud
cover, fronts, etc., it rained 70 of those days.

There is no way that a weather forecaster can predict a 100% chance that it
will be raining over 70% of the metro area, or that it will rain 70% of the
24 hours in the next day.  Weather forecasting is not that exact a science.

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Paul Bartholomew          |   "The time has come, the walrus said, to talk of
                          |    many things..."                  Lewis Carroll
pdb059@mipl3.jpl.nasa.gov |   Disclaimer:  Opinions?  What opinions?
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