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?
Comment on Why are weather apps so bad at telling you the current weather?
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 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.
independantiste@sh.itjust.works 3 months ago
Rhynoplaz@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yeah, kind of. It’s going to rain. That’s the forecast. That rain will effect half of the area in their forecast range.
MacedWindow@lemmy.world 3 months ago
That’s not how that works
givesomefucks@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Yeah…
And it wants a definitive answer for the exact location they’re standing in…
Which isn’t possible
EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
No, because clouds—and weather patterns in general—are not necessarily uniform across an area.
criticon@lemmy.ca 3 months ago
No it doesn’t, it means that under those conditions, about 50% of the times it has rained in that area
folekaule@lemmy.world 3 months ago
Unless I misunderstood what you said, that’s not it either. 50% chance of rain means exactly that: according to their forecast models, there is a 50% change it will rain. Snopes did a writeup of this.
WolfLink@sh.itjust.works 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 in 40% of the are or a 40% chance of it raining in 100% of the area. Real distributions are typically messier than that.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
Can’t trust snopes any more
EveryMuffinIsNowEncrypted@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 months ago
Says who? And what evidence?
kitnaht@lemmy.world 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.
linearchaos@lemmy.world 3 months ago
yeah, never mind the references in the article where they pointed out the evidence for their conclusions. :P