I’m 67 years old and live in the eastern half of the United States. Weather forecasts here have improved a lot since I was a child. Up to five day forecasts are usually accurate as to general conditions. Hazardous weather is usually forecast several hours, up to a few days in advance. Hurricane forecasts are much better than they were. Even tornado producing storms are usually forecast at least a fews hours in advance. Tornados themselves remain dangerously unpredictable, but when they form, we get rapid and accurate warnings. I think the U.S. Weather Service is doing a great job.
When I was a kid the weather forecast was a joke, but now I check the five day forecast a lot and it has the temperatures within a couple degrees a week in advance 90+ percent of the time. Rain prediction is still spotty. Especially in the mountains where I live.
@@Volodimar Whatever the Windows desktop app is running is surprisingly accurate. It's "rain to stop" and "rain to start" messages as well as "rain" (replace rain with snow too) are exceptionally accurate even in a valley between two mountains. I learned that to ignore that is to walk home soaked.
That’s one of the reasons why forecasts traditionally used phrases like “scattered rain” or “isolated showers”. Sometimes we know that rain will occur for some places in a region but won’t know where exactly, due to the inherently chaotic nature of convection, so forecasts were worded to convey that uncertainty. Forecast technology has advanced tremendously in the last few decades, but the fine details might remain inherently unpredictable due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It’s the difference between knowing that heating up a pot of water will cause a certain amount of bubbling, and trying to predict exactly when and where each bubble will form.
This is good timing as in Hungary the Government fired the heads of the National Weather Forecast Agency, because they "predicted the weather wrong" during our national holiday, so they had to cancel the event. The ironic thing in it, that it was the Government who decided to cancel the event, not the Weather Service. It must be a hard job, and I really felt bad for the Weathermans.
I work in climatology of extreme weather events and how I like to put it is: Imagine a saucepan filled with boiling water above a source of heat, if you move the saucepan around, you can see the areas where the bubbles form change and that is what climatologist are doing, now try and predict where every little bubble explodes on the surface of the water, it’s what meteorologist are doing with convective events and it’s why it’s so hard to be accurate !
But as what I heard from some scientists: It's easier to predict the overall weather of planet Jupiter than the local weather on our own planet Earth. Nature and how we are able to interpret things can be quite odd.
Maybe because we are tracking planetary scale weather in Jupiter (or atleast on a larger scale)? Also maybe the fact that Jupiter is mostly gases whereas Earth's Atmosphere has to experience the effects of both Water and Land.
As a professional weather forecaster, I always shake my head when I’m told how weather forecasts “suck” considering, with the exception of prediction of astronomical objects, weather forecasts are the most successful forms of predicting humans do. There are several things in this video that are just plain wrong though, and make it seem like convection is completely a mystery. It’s not. We might not know quantities to super precision but we can predict whether we’re getting just showers or severe thunderstorms. And convection usually is LARGER than the resolution of radar beams, not smaller. We know the wind speeds and can watch how fast showers or storms are moving. This is how the Storm Prediction Center can actually do Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and Tornado Warnings, and give estimates of when the storm will arrive in different locations. Seriously usually videos on this channel are good, but as a lesson in meteorology, this one is not.
I'd love to hear more about this; what's the limiting component to weather predictions then? The observations, the chaotic nature of weather, or something else? Also, what's the cause of the discrepancy between humans generally considering weather forecasts to be poor? Is it just because we experience weather in a local scale, whereas weather forecasts are accurate on a larger scale?
@@CapSora The big limiting component is chaos. But there have also been improvements due to faster computers (which allow for smaller scales to be modelled directly) and higher resolution of satellite photos, among other things. As for the discrepancy with the impression of accuracy, it really comes down to confirmation bias. You care much more when you make a decision based on the forecast and the forecast is wrong, than when you make it and the forecast is right. And so you'll remember when it's wrong more often. Also, you more often 'lose' more when it's wrong, and humans value loss more than gain. But also, it depends on what being "wrong" actually is. For instance, if the probability of precipitation is 30%, and the forecasted amount is 0.25" and it rains...but it rains 0.30" instead....was the forecast "wrong" Technically, sure. But most people wouldn't care about a difference of only 0.05" of rain...and probably wouldn't even be able to tell the difference. If I forecast sun with a high of 72, and it's 75...does anyone care? But what if I forecast rain, with a low of 34...but instead that low is 32...you're probably seeing snow instead of rain, even though my temperature forecast is actually closer. And you'll probably wonder what was wrong with the forecaster that they couldn't forecast snow.
I've noticed a huge improvement in weather forecast accuracy over the last decade, so clearly we're understanding things better than before or at least we have better data. Unfortunately, in my region, weather forecasts aren't necessary 8 months of the year - anyone can predict that "Today will be scorchingly hot and unbearably humid"
Similarly, in my neck of the woods, in all seasons excluding summer (which we only have now thanks to global warming) we can be sure that at some point during the day, it will rain. The humidity is never really going away. And there's a 3/4 chance of total cloud cover for at least half the day. . After that, the questions are of how many thunderstorms will hit at once (Spring), how large the inevitable hail will be before it turns to slush (Winter), and how big and where-at the pileup(s) will be from the many out-of-towners and newbies to the state that will crash because they're not used to driving in the rain of our ever-wet conditions. Those are the real variables the news tries to report accurately each season.
@@iprobablyforgotsomething Rain at summer? Snow? I'm so jealous right now, I haven't seen a drop of rain in several months, and I've only ever seen snow falling once in my life
I lived next to the largest temperate rain forest in North America. When people would ask me about our weather conditions, I would reply back, “We have two seasons. Warm and wet , then cold and wet.”
In fact, my grandmother's apartment was literally right next to a rainforest. From the carpark we could see and hear wild roosters, pythons, monkeys, and red dragonflies.
"Rain in the wet, showers in the dry." But when it comes to forecasts, they are pretty much always right. You know you'll get it if they forecast rain, and there are always showers in the area if they forecast that. The showers might miss you on any one day, but that doesn't mean the forecast is wrong.
Proper title: Why Rain Forecasts Kinda Suck As some other commenters have mentioned, weather forecasts have actually improved leaps and bounds over the past few decades, particularly with longer-range forecasts. And even with rain, being confident with 40% of it and hit-or-miss with the other 60% is still gonna net you about 70% accuracy overall. That doesn't suck. People just complain about weather (i.e. rain) forecasts the most because it sucks when your plans get rained out. But the old adage/joke that "weather forecasts suck" is really rather outdated.
I remember seeing a movie about a weatherman where someone brought this up and the answer they got sums it up pretty good IMO. "It's wind! It blows around all over the damn place!"
That also must depend on where you live. Here it seems that fronts are pretty common and the weather forecast tend to be very accurate. Though it can be a bias from my part.
Where is this “here” u speak of? This is the internet and youtube comments are pretty much anonymous, so how do u expect anyone to know what you’re referring to if u don’t specify?? Lol
This year in particular feels like the weather forecasts have been terrible. Different apps saying completely different things, and weather predictions changing 3 times within 3 hours. But this year has also seen some pretty exceptional weather for the UK. First ever time the country broke 40°C, and there's a drought. Can't wait to see what's going to happen to us during the winter.
I see other people already pointed out the map of valencia at 2:08, but what's so cool is that we just had a convective storm here when this was uploaded! Coincidence?
I always used the term 'Popcorn Showers' for Convective Rain, there is just so much heat and moisture in the area that little showers pop in and out almost at random~
I work in airline flight planning (including monitoring during the entire flight) so I'm about as close as one can get to meteorology without having a degree in that field. Between my experience and reading the book "The Weather Machine" which explains how we started forecasting weather, I can say that we've come a long way! It's said that we gain about one day of accurate forecast every ten years due to advances in technology (like supercomputing and observational data). Besides, sometimes it's obvious that when the call for rain in Houston (which covers a massive amount of area), there may be showers here but not there at one moment and then other places and then other places, all within the area in the same day.
Last week in Austria, five people died because they got in a storm. Meteorologists said, they didn't know the storm was coming in this direction, because it travelled so fast (~ 200 km/h). It came and went within 15 minutes.
I am a weather enthusiast and have a small weather channel on twitter. I live in Bengaluru (south india) and more than 90% of the rain we receive (quantitatively) is from monsoon withdrawal phase thuderstorms (convective rain) and i can confirm that even the most brilliant meteorologists, radars etc cannot track these systems. Also it is a pain when people comment "is it going to rain here?" Cuz their movements are erratic as HELL.
They have absolutely no clue when and where it's going to rain in Florida. We have the eastern seabreeze meeting the western seabreaze and it storms in some spots and is completely blue skies in others and blue skies during storms in other areas. Our forecast is basically, it might rain at some point in time. I've seen lots of storm clouds today and zero rain. Right now I'm under clear skies with lots of lightning in the area.
So what makes the shortlived convective rain more common in certain areas? In Pittsburgh, it's 100% true that rain or snow or clear skies can stop after only 5 minutes.
Yea I was at Las Vegas yesterday and I stormed past the storm, It was pretty cool. It lasted an hour, I saw dust rise from the ground because it was being sucked up. The road had a river running through it and I got scared and drove back against traffic. It was a fun day.
I'd imagine in dry, desert regions like California (which is basically in the middle of a permanent drought) don't experience sudden rainfalls during the summer months. Here in the UK, suddenly raining in the middle of a hot summer's day is extremely common and it's so annoying because it's when you're out and about without an umbrella or a coat, and you end up getting soaked. I am worried my suit will get ruined like that one day because I'm poor and so buying new suits for job interviews sucks, and I feel stupid carrying an umbrella around with me when it's sunny outside, when it's really overcast, that's different...
California is definitely not mostly a dry desert area lol. (It’s one of the most fertile places in America!) You’re thinking of places like Nevada and parts of Arizona instead.
The desert Southwest of the US is indeed in a megadrought, however we can get downpours that rival the tropics during the summer Monsoon. Intense severe thunderstorms fueled by local terrain enhancing the lift and humid air from the tropics can dump an entire year's worth of rain in one area in less than an hour. Along with Lightning, Hurricane Force Winds, and sometimes large hail, these "Microbursts" usually cause intense and devastating Flash Flooding. The ground has no time to absorb the trillions of gallons of water so it all runs downhill.
Last week thunderstorms where forecasted here and nothing. Today thunderstorms should come and nothing. Tomorrow thunderstorm should come. A few weeks ago rain was forecasted for the day and water came from the sky. The thing was it was like someone was using a spray can for like 5 minutes. The ground didn't got wet and all it done was making the air wet and hotter. I'm not upset when the rain comes but not directly over we. Usually when I hear thunderstorms, I expect long lasting rain but that moves. This usually means the sun gets blocked for a while at it helps cooling everything off. It shouldn't be that hard to classify the rain better. I only want to know if there is rain coming that does nothing, cools off an area, everything gets flooded or its just annoying, because it only makes wet air. But what I also miss is a better warning for lighting. I want a warning when the chance is getting higher, when lightning can strike on me or not. A few years ago, a lightning strike struck a few hundert meters away from me. I was outside and waiting for my bus and I had zero protection. I actually was scared. It was quite a strong one.
If you can hear thunder, you can get hit by lightning. It just so happens that the distance the sound from a lightning strike attenuates to near zero is about the distance it’s possible for a lightning bolt to extend laterally before striking the ground.
The main problem is, if rain is predicted, you cancel plans. If it doesn't actually rain (or does), you miss out. If sun is predicted, and it rains, you will have to cancel, and you miss out. 3/4 times, you miss out instead of 2/4 times
Central canada here (montreal)! The weather forecasters suck at predicting rain or a lot of sun, but they are really good at predicting snow, allergens, sun, and wind.
question : solar updraft towers could be used to create convective rain ? solar updraft towers are a rather intresting structure to me at least : they are basically large flat greenhouse with gaps in their walls and a really tall chimney that can suck up air thanks to the greenhouse effect and the raising of hot air trough the main chimney , they are suggested for energy , wich i think are terrible considering we have PV and just nuclear , however they could cause convective rain since it causes a controlled updraft that may make rains more likely while also powering glider type aircrafts
There's more to convective rain than just "updraft". To put it simply, just because an air mass is warm, doesn't mean it'll go up. Sometimes the atmosphere is just that stable that there's not enough lift to push the moist, warm air upwards far enough if at all. Skew-T Log-P chart reading usually explain forms of precipitation (or the lack of it) quite well
I live i Wichita, KS, and people don't understand that when the meteorologist says "rain in the forecast" it actually pertains to a larger area than their exact location. Henceforth, i hear a lot of comments like "those weather guys are b.s." and "science can't figure anything out". Meanwhile its raining the next suburb over...
When u talked about rain from hard to predict small patches of cloud, the first thing came to my mind is DeepMind's Alphafold. Apparently the breadcrumb trail was well laid. But the sad thing is - their scholarship program doesn't include Asia at all, let alone South Asia, where I'm from!
Honestly, DeepMind has gotten where they are by keeping valuable data proprietary. Open source the data and keep your algorithms to yourself, and someone else (with a lot of computing resources) will still come up with a solution that works just as well.
So, that's why it rained unpredictably at Splish Splash water park a few weeks ago! The weather forecast called for sunny skies, but during the trip, it rained out of nowhere!
Those numbers can be very confusing. Like you think with higher numbers it’s gonna rain longer. But it just means how likely it is to rain at all and not at your exact location but in your area.
am i guessing right that this video was made specifically in response to the BS that is going on in hungary and the national weather forecast agency? if yes, thank you so so much for being relevant ~
Wow, man... as a former weather forecaster for the US Air Force, i can confidently say that this video has SO much wrong with it. This makes it seem like we have no idea how the weather works. On the contrary, we understand convective processes very well and can very accurately predict things like thunderstorms. What's harder to predict are the individual locations of those little brief summer showers, but even then, we forecast the conditions that they will happen in, not the individual isolated showers themselves. That's why the term "scattered showers" is used. It means the conditions are right for them to pop up at a moments notice over a broader area. We forecast for a broad area, not for your specific neighborhood. The air force and local airports have a 5 mile forecast radius, while tv weather and NWS have a forecast area that may be much much larger, so a 30% chance of rain means that its for that specific FORECAST AREA. For example, i live in northeast Texas and fall under the Dallas-Fort Worth forecast area. DFW is more than 100 miles away. So that 30% rain applies to a much broader area than just MY tiny city area. Oh, and snow? Yeah, that's not like rain, where its just a specific amount. No, you take that single inch of what would be rain and multiply it, based on temperature and the available moisture in the atmosphere. You can easily end up having TEN times the amount of what instead be liquid water. Snow and especially freezing rain are some of the downright hardest things to forecast. We're literally predicting the future of a chaotic system, folks. We're gonna be wrong sometimes. So next time you're ready to complain about a 30% chance of rain that didn't happen, or a inch more snow than originally forecast, remember this. Give your local weatherman a fucking break. @MinuteEarth, your grade for this video is a C- and that's being lenient. Research better next time.
they're not complaining. the point is that it's a super difficult problem to solve. people might understand how the relevant processes work but all the chaotic variables make it impossible to accurately predict. that's what they're saying in the video
@@Merlincat007 how so? The information in the video that I'm correcting is just plain wrong. It has nothing to do with the tone of the video. Its just scientifically wrong.🤣
So what this tells me is that there is merit in differentiating the forecast accordingly as well. Right now you only ever see more generic stuff like "will it rain". It would probably be useful to somehow differentiate highly predictable weather front based rain from highly unpredictable heat patch based rain. While you can probably deduce that after watching this video yourself as the end user of weather forecasts, it would probably be handy if this was somehow differentiated with much more than chance of rain. If fronts are easy to predict, the confidence of that probability is much higher than that of the quick chance rainfalls and should somehow be marked differently. How exactly, I don't know, but it feels like they should. Or if they already are, it is not in a way that I as a layman have been able to deduct, and probably needs better signaling.
The Australian bureau of meteorology now gives forcasts with rain quantity at 10% confidence, 25% confidence 75% confidence and 90% confidence intervals. So it's easier to separate the "chance of showers" and "chance of storms", from the light drizzle and heavy rains. So the data is out there! More meteorology departments should do this!
It's so frustrating when weather forecast says "it will be rainy tomorrow" but turned out to be fair weather all along, or vice versa. And I don't get why predict the weather for the next five days when they can't even accurately predict the weather for the next 24 hours.
Is it a coincidence that this is coming out after Hungarian meteorological service's head has been kicked out becouse they couldn't tell more accurately than 80% that rain will come or not ?
They better not be wrong about the week straight of rain starting tomorrow because I am DONE with back to back heatwaves abusing me and my lack of AC because this heat does not belong here! >:c
It'll be awesome when our civilization gets to a point in existence where we can control the weather so we could know exactly what time it will rain and when the sun will shine. That will be mind-blowing to our generation.
I remember a day in 4th grade when it would rain for 10-20 minutes then be sunny the water would evaporate off the hot asphalt and then it would rain again, I think i counted atleast 8 cycles in just the time I was at school
Something that would be very interesting is to combine “why are weather forecasts so bad” with a video on confirmation bias. People only remember when the weather is worse than expected, and rarely when it’s correct, or even better than expected. Also, people misinterpret probability of precipitation all the time. If the POP is 10% and it rains…was the forecast “wrong”? No…there still was a 10% chance of it happening and it did. But you’ll put that into your memory as a “wrong forecast”.
Here in sweden 9 out of 10 times they exaggerate the total rain/snow amounts by at least 3-4 times, maybe they calculated that global warming with the increase of 6% more absolute humidity levels would rise the precipitation amount more than it haved.
The forecasts are so bad nowadays that you literally can bet money they'll be 100% wrong. I remember growing up you could rely on the local on the 8s, they'd be right about the storms sweeping through the area in the evening. Now they just predict a chance of rain all day just to cover their rears. And it changes every hour.
i'm not sure if it can help any but here in Denmark we have an old saying the roughly translates to: if the sky looks like a sheeps belly it wil rain within 3 days. and i can recall a time for thats not been true for the past 10 years
It's almost like we don't have 80 different ways of compensating for small variables and most of our monitoring equipment isn't covering most of the ground so we have to do a boat load of guesswork on certain types of predictions
Oh? Underrepresented groups? By what metric? And... did they say diverse perspectives? So are they actually giving scholarships based on said perceptions, or are they just assuming that everyone of a "group" just has the same perspective? I'm sure there are definitely absolutely no connotations to saying that members of a "group" all think the same.
That could explain why it always seems to rain on Memorial Day in Illinois where I live. My mom said it was because God wants people to stay inside and think of the troops instead of partying.
I’m 67 years old and live in the eastern half of the United States. Weather forecasts here have improved a lot since I was a child. Up to five day forecasts are usually accurate as to general conditions. Hazardous weather is usually forecast several hours, up to a few days in advance. Hurricane forecasts are much better than they were. Even tornado producing storms are usually forecast at least a fews hours in advance. Tornados themselves remain dangerously unpredictable, but when they form, we get rapid and accurate warnings. I think the U.S. Weather Service is doing a great job.
When I was a kid the weather forecast was a joke, but now I check the five day forecast a lot and it has the temperatures within a couple degrees a week in advance 90+ percent of the time. Rain prediction is still spotty. Especially in the mountains where I live.
They're the best. AccuWeather is evil. I hate them.
@@CharliMorganMusic i usually rely on local airport weather forecast, global forecasts apps suck 🙄
Here in Ireland the weather forecast sucks
@@Volodimar Whatever the Windows desktop app is running is surprisingly accurate. It's "rain to stop" and "rain to start" messages as well as "rain" (replace rain with snow too) are exceptionally accurate even in a valley between two mountains.
I learned that to ignore that is to walk home soaked.
That’s one of the reasons why forecasts traditionally used phrases like “scattered rain” or “isolated showers”. Sometimes we know that rain will occur for some places in a region but won’t know where exactly, due to the inherently chaotic nature of convection, so forecasts were worded to convey that uncertainty. Forecast technology has advanced tremendously in the last few decades, but the fine details might remain inherently unpredictable due to sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It’s the difference between knowing that heating up a pot of water will cause a certain amount of bubbling, and trying to predict exactly when and where each bubble will form.
and you only have 4 data points in your pot.
This is good timing as in Hungary the Government fired the heads of the National Weather Forecast Agency, because they "predicted the weather wrong" during our national holiday, so they had to cancel the event.
The ironic thing in it, that it was the Government who decided to cancel the event, not the Weather Service.
It must be a hard job, and I really felt bad for the Weathermans.
That reminds me of Caligula declaring war on the sea 😐
Hugary's government is more idiotic then Polish one, and that is really an achivement.
This is blatant OMSZ propaganda /s
Was looking for this comment😀
Bojler eladó
I work in climatology of extreme weather events and how I like to put it is:
Imagine a saucepan filled with boiling water above a source of heat, if you move the saucepan around, you can see the areas where the bubbles form change and that is what climatologist are doing, now try and predict where every little bubble explodes on the surface of the water, it’s what meteorologist are doing with convective events and it’s why it’s so hard to be accurate !
This video was uploaded literally a few minutes after I was explaining rain and barometric pressure to my mother-what a coincidence!
XD
Situations like this normally trigger people to claim "My phone is secretly listening to me!"
Remember, people: Coincidences just happen.
@@RealRomplayer Yeah, I’ve heard people say that. You’re right. Entropy just leads to fun surprises once in awhile.
Or was it ?
@@witness1013 _Vsauce music plays_
But as what I heard from some scientists:
It's easier to predict the overall weather of planet Jupiter than the local weather on our own planet Earth. Nature and how we are able to interpret things can be quite odd.
Maybe because we are tracking planetary scale weather in Jupiter (or atleast on a larger scale)? Also maybe the fact that Jupiter is mostly gases whereas Earth's Atmosphere has to experience the effects of both Water and Land.
@@Sivah_Akash Jupiter's weather is very stable compared to Earth. Storm patterns last for decades if not centuries.
well we already predicted it's going to submerge islands in 20 years last 30 years
@@archmad that’s not weather that’s climate
@@archmad , was it a consensus or just a few sources saying that?
As a professional weather forecaster, I always shake my head when I’m told how weather forecasts “suck” considering, with the exception of prediction of astronomical objects, weather forecasts are the most successful forms of predicting humans do.
There are several things in this video that are just plain wrong though, and make it seem like convection is completely a mystery. It’s not. We might not know quantities to super precision but we can predict whether we’re getting just showers or severe thunderstorms. And convection usually is LARGER than the resolution of radar beams, not smaller. We know the wind speeds and can watch how fast showers or storms are moving. This is how the Storm Prediction Center can actually do Severe Thunderstorm Warnings and Tornado Warnings, and give estimates of when the storm will arrive in different locations.
Seriously usually videos on this channel are good, but as a lesson in meteorology, this one is not.
I'd love to hear more about this; what's the limiting component to weather predictions then? The observations, the chaotic nature of weather, or something else?
Also, what's the cause of the discrepancy between humans generally considering weather forecasts to be poor? Is it just because we experience weather in a local scale, whereas weather forecasts are accurate on a larger scale?
@@CapSora The big limiting component is chaos. But there have also been improvements due to faster computers (which allow for smaller scales to be modelled directly) and higher resolution of satellite photos, among other things.
As for the discrepancy with the impression of accuracy, it really comes down to confirmation bias. You care much more when you make a decision based on the forecast and the forecast is wrong, than when you make it and the forecast is right. And so you'll remember when it's wrong more often.
Also, you more often 'lose' more when it's wrong, and humans value loss more than gain.
But also, it depends on what being "wrong" actually is. For instance, if the probability of precipitation is 30%, and the forecasted amount is 0.25" and it rains...but it rains 0.30" instead....was the forecast "wrong" Technically, sure. But most people wouldn't care about a difference of only 0.05" of rain...and probably wouldn't even be able to tell the difference.
If I forecast sun with a high of 72, and it's 75...does anyone care? But what if I forecast rain, with a low of 34...but instead that low is 32...you're probably seeing snow instead of rain, even though my temperature forecast is actually closer.
And you'll probably wonder what was wrong with the forecaster that they couldn't forecast snow.
@@DeannaGilbert616 that's a great explanation, thank you!
Thank you. I'm in the UK and our weather forecasts have improved a lot over the past 40 years. Come on @minuteearth a response is needed here 🤔
Or perhaps all their videos are greatly flawed and you just know enough about this subject to know that this particular one is greatly flawed.
I like how cute the art style is in this one! The little faces on the cold/warm masses of air makes it all the more fun to watch and learn!
Yeah, it’s rather cute
Perfect timing. The head of Meteorological Service was fired after wrong forecast for national holiday in Hungary.
I've noticed a huge improvement in weather forecast accuracy over the last decade, so clearly we're understanding things better than before or at least we have better data. Unfortunately, in my region, weather forecasts aren't necessary 8 months of the year - anyone can predict that "Today will be scorchingly hot and unbearably humid"
Similarly, in my neck of the woods, in all seasons excluding summer (which we only have now thanks to global warming) we can be sure that at some point during the day, it will rain. The humidity is never really going away. And there's a 3/4 chance of total cloud cover for at least half the day.
.
After that, the questions are of how many thunderstorms will hit at once (Spring), how large the inevitable hail will be before it turns to slush (Winter), and how big and where-at the pileup(s) will be from the many out-of-towners and newbies to the state that will crash because they're not used to driving in the rain of our ever-wet conditions. Those are the real variables the news tries to report accurately each season.
@@iprobablyforgotsomething Rain at summer? Snow? I'm so jealous right now, I haven't seen a drop of rain in several months, and I've only ever seen snow falling once in my life
Wow, I recognized Valencia's city map because of the Jardin del Turia. Neat!
I lived next to the largest temperate rain forest in North America. When people would ask me about our weather conditions, I would reply back, “We have two seasons. Warm and wet , then cold and wet.”
Malaysia is like that too. And I love it!
In fact, my grandmother's apartment was literally right next to a rainforest. From the carpark we could see and hear wild roosters, pythons, monkeys, and red dragonflies.
That is nothing Mumbai has only 2 settings Warm and dry, warm and wet
"Rain in the wet, showers in the dry."
But when it comes to forecasts, they are pretty much always right. You know you'll get it if they forecast rain, and there are always showers in the area if they forecast that. The showers might miss you on any one day, but that doesn't mean the forecast is wrong.
Proper title: Why Rain Forecasts Kinda Suck
As some other commenters have mentioned, weather forecasts have actually improved leaps and bounds over the past few decades, particularly with longer-range forecasts. And even with rain, being confident with 40% of it and hit-or-miss with the other 60% is still gonna net you about 70% accuracy overall. That doesn't suck. People just complain about weather (i.e. rain) forecasts the most because it sucks when your plans get rained out. But the old adage/joke that "weather forecasts suck" is really rather outdated.
In the city I live now, Quito, we had an everlasting changing weather all year long, sun in the morning, rain at the afternoon, and then sun again.
I remember seeing a movie about a weatherman where someone brought this up and the answer they got sums it up pretty good IMO. "It's wind! It blows around all over the damn place!"
2:08 Isn't this Valencia, Spain?
Yes it is! Good eye ;)
At 2:15, there's a map of Valencia in the background!
Convective rain can be hilariously weird causing rain to occur within feet or a few miles of your location and your house stays dry.
That also must depend on where you live. Here it seems that fronts are pretty common and the weather forecast tend to be very accurate. Though it can be a bias from my part.
Where is this “here” u speak of? This is the internet and youtube comments are pretty much anonymous, so how do u expect anyone to know what you’re referring to if u don’t specify?? Lol
@@MerkhVision Here as where I am locally in physical space. Not in digital space. ;)
This year in particular feels like the weather forecasts have been terrible.
Different apps saying completely different things, and weather predictions changing 3 times within 3 hours.
But this year has also seen some pretty exceptional weather for the UK. First ever time the country broke 40°C, and there's a drought.
Can't wait to see what's going to happen to us during the winter.
I see other people already pointed out the map of valencia at 2:08, but what's so cool is that we just had a convective storm here when this was uploaded! Coincidence?
When i saw the map i was like OMG is that Valencia??? :D
In the southeast, it’s very humid during the summer, so random rainstorms happen a lot
I always used the term 'Popcorn Showers' for Convective Rain, there is just so much heat and moisture in the area that little showers pop in and out almost at random~
I work in airline flight planning (including monitoring during the entire flight) so I'm about as close as one can get to meteorology without having a degree in that field. Between my experience and reading the book "The Weather Machine" which explains how we started forecasting weather, I can say that we've come a long way! It's said that we gain about one day of accurate forecast every ten years due to advances in technology (like supercomputing and observational data). Besides, sometimes it's obvious that when the call for rain in Houston (which covers a massive amount of area), there may be showers here but not there at one moment and then other places and then other places, all within the area in the same day.
Last week in Austria, five people died because they got in a storm. Meteorologists said, they didn't know the storm was coming in this direction, because it travelled so fast (~ 200 km/h). It came and went within 15 minutes.
I am a weather enthusiast and have a small weather channel on twitter. I live in Bengaluru (south india) and more than 90% of the rain we receive (quantitatively) is from monsoon withdrawal phase thuderstorms (convective rain) and i can confirm that even the most brilliant meteorologists, radars etc cannot track these systems. Also it is a pain when people comment "is it going to rain here?" Cuz their movements are erratic as HELL.
They have absolutely no clue when and where it's going to rain in Florida. We have the eastern seabreeze meeting the western seabreaze and it storms in some spots and is completely blue skies in others and blue skies during storms in other areas. Our forecast is basically, it might rain at some point in time. I've seen lots of storm clouds today and zero rain. Right now I'm under clear skies with lots of lightning in the area.
So what makes the shortlived convective rain more common in certain areas? In Pittsburgh, it's 100% true that rain or snow or clear skies can stop after only 5 minutes.
Humidity and tropical areas
Yea I was at Las Vegas yesterday and I stormed past the storm, It was pretty cool. It lasted an hour, I saw dust rise from the ground because it was being sucked up. The road had a river running through it and I got scared and drove back against traffic. It was a fun day.
I'd imagine in dry, desert regions like California (which is basically in the middle of a permanent drought) don't experience sudden rainfalls during the summer months. Here in the UK, suddenly raining in the middle of a hot summer's day is extremely common and it's so annoying because it's when you're out and about without an umbrella or a coat, and you end up getting soaked. I am worried my suit will get ruined like that one day because I'm poor and so buying new suits for job interviews sucks, and I feel stupid carrying an umbrella around with me when it's sunny outside, when it's really overcast, that's different...
We do have summer rains. They're rarer, especially now. Most people don't live in the desert areas either. The coast is nearly a desert but not quite.
California is definitely not mostly a dry desert area lol. (It’s one of the most fertile places in America!) You’re thinking of places like Nevada and parts of Arizona instead.
The desert Southwest of the US is indeed in a megadrought, however we can get downpours that rival the tropics during the summer Monsoon.
Intense severe thunderstorms fueled by local terrain enhancing the lift and humid air from the tropics can dump an entire year's worth of rain in one area in less than an hour. Along with Lightning, Hurricane Force Winds, and sometimes large hail, these "Microbursts" usually cause intense and devastating Flash Flooding. The ground has no time to absorb the trillions of gallons of water so it all runs downhill.
I live in Poland, here we have 3 different air fronts from different sides and it's impossible to predict weather for more than 48 hours in advance
0:40 Love the Breath of the Wild Reference!
Last week thunderstorms where forecasted here and nothing. Today thunderstorms should come and nothing. Tomorrow thunderstorm should come.
A few weeks ago rain was forecasted for the day and water came from the sky. The thing was it was like someone was using a spray can for like 5 minutes. The ground didn't got wet and all it done was making the air wet and hotter.
I'm not upset when the rain comes but not directly over we. Usually when I hear thunderstorms, I expect long lasting rain but that moves. This usually means the sun gets blocked for a while at it helps cooling everything off.
It shouldn't be that hard to classify the rain better. I only want to know if there is rain coming that does nothing, cools off an area, everything gets flooded or its just annoying, because it only makes wet air.
But what I also miss is a better warning for lighting. I want a warning when the chance is getting higher, when lightning can strike on me or not. A few years ago, a lightning strike struck a few hundert meters away from me. I was outside and waiting for my bus and I had zero protection. I actually was scared. It was quite a strong one.
If you can hear thunder, you can get hit by lightning. It just so happens that the distance the sound from a lightning strike attenuates to near zero is about the distance it’s possible for a lightning bolt to extend laterally before striking the ground.
0:49 :O hyrule!!!
The main problem is, if rain is predicted, you cancel plans. If it doesn't actually rain (or does), you miss out.
If sun is predicted, and it rains, you will have to cancel, and you miss out. 3/4 times, you miss out instead of 2/4 times
Central canada here (montreal)! The weather forecasters suck at predicting rain or a lot of sun, but they are really good at predicting snow, allergens, sun, and wind.
You used Valencia in the map as an example, my city 😊😊, blindblowing moment hahaha
The art in this episode was really good! I loved the cute and expressive faces on the clouds lol
question : solar updraft towers could be used to create convective rain ?
solar updraft towers are a rather intresting structure to me at least : they are basically large flat greenhouse with gaps in their walls and a really tall chimney that can suck up air thanks to the greenhouse effect and the raising of hot air trough the main chimney ,
they are suggested for energy , wich i think are terrible considering we have PV and just nuclear ,
however they could cause convective rain since it causes a controlled updraft that may make rains more likely
while also powering glider type aircrafts
There's more to convective rain than just "updraft".
To put it simply, just because an air mass is warm, doesn't mean it'll go up. Sometimes the atmosphere is just that stable that there's not enough lift to push the moist, warm air upwards far enough if at all. Skew-T Log-P chart reading usually explain forms of precipitation (or the lack of it) quite well
I live i Wichita, KS, and people don't understand that when the meteorologist says "rain in the forecast" it actually pertains to a larger area than their exact location. Henceforth, i hear a lot of comments like "those weather guys are b.s." and "science can't figure anything out". Meanwhile its raining the next suburb over...
This is why I always carry an umbrella with me. Too hot climate, I can use it; Rainy climate, I can also use it.
Steve Udelson da Goat
Another, Nice Earth and Space, Science UA-cam, Video..!! 🌧⛈
Thank you for showing the map of Valencia in the radar drawing
When u talked about rain from hard to predict small patches of cloud, the first thing came to my mind is DeepMind's Alphafold. Apparently the breadcrumb trail was well laid. But the sad thing is - their scholarship program doesn't include Asia at all, let alone South Asia, where I'm from!
Honestly, DeepMind has gotten where they are by keeping valuable data proprietary. Open source the data and keep your algorithms to yourself, and someone else (with a lot of computing resources) will still come up with a solution that works just as well.
@@ChasmChaos Is the algorithm open source? Cos, scientists need to study that.
In Scotland there’s always a chance of rain which really confuses the weather forecast
So, that's why it rained unpredictably at Splish Splash water park a few weeks ago! The weather forecast called for sunny skies, but during the trip, it rained out of nowhere!
Weather app: 90% rain morning until afternoon
Reality: 2 minutes of rain
Those numbers can be very confusing. Like you think with higher numbers it’s gonna rain longer. But it just means how likely it is to rain at all and not at your exact location but in your area.
am i guessing right that this video was made specifically in response to the BS that is going on in hungary and the national weather forecast agency? if yes, thank you so so much for being relevant ~
Wow, man... as a former weather forecaster for the US Air Force, i can confidently say that this video has SO much wrong with it. This makes it seem like we have no idea how the weather works. On the contrary, we understand convective processes very well and can very accurately predict things like thunderstorms. What's harder to predict are the individual locations of those little brief summer showers, but even then, we forecast the conditions that they will happen in, not the individual isolated showers themselves. That's why the term "scattered showers" is used. It means the conditions are right for them to pop up at a moments notice over a broader area.
We forecast for a broad area, not for your specific neighborhood.
The air force and local airports have a 5 mile forecast radius, while tv weather and NWS have a forecast area that may be much much larger, so a 30% chance of rain means that its for that specific FORECAST AREA. For example, i live in northeast Texas and fall under the Dallas-Fort Worth forecast area. DFW is more than 100 miles away. So that 30% rain applies to a much broader area than just MY tiny city area.
Oh, and snow? Yeah, that's not like rain, where its just a specific amount. No, you take that single inch of what would be rain and multiply it, based on temperature and the available moisture in the atmosphere. You can easily end up having TEN times the amount of what instead be liquid water. Snow and especially freezing rain are some of the downright hardest things to forecast.
We're literally predicting the future of a chaotic system, folks. We're gonna be wrong sometimes. So next time you're ready to complain about a 30% chance of rain that didn't happen, or a inch more snow than originally forecast, remember this.
Give your local weatherman a fucking break.
@MinuteEarth, your grade for this video is a C- and that's being lenient. Research better next time.
they're not complaining. the point is that it's a super difficult problem to solve. people might understand how the relevant processes work but all the chaotic variables make it impossible to accurately predict. that's what they're saying in the video
@@magica3526 no, what they're saying is just plain wrong. Sure they might mean well, but the information is factually incorrect.
Feels like you misinterpreted the tone of the video.
@@Merlincat007 how so? The information in the video that I'm correcting is just plain wrong. It has nothing to do with the tone of the video. Its just scientifically wrong.🤣
Someone needs to learn to be more lenient, and it's not the creator of this video....
So what this tells me is that there is merit in differentiating the forecast accordingly as well. Right now you only ever see more generic stuff like "will it rain". It would probably be useful to somehow differentiate highly predictable weather front based rain from highly unpredictable heat patch based rain. While you can probably deduce that after watching this video yourself as the end user of weather forecasts, it would probably be handy if this was somehow differentiated with much more than chance of rain. If fronts are easy to predict, the confidence of that probability is much higher than that of the quick chance rainfalls and should somehow be marked differently. How exactly, I don't know, but it feels like they should. Or if they already are, it is not in a way that I as a layman have been able to deduct, and probably needs better signaling.
The Australian bureau of meteorology now gives forcasts with rain quantity at 10% confidence, 25% confidence 75% confidence and 90% confidence intervals. So it's easier to separate the "chance of showers" and "chance of storms", from the light drizzle and heavy rains.
So the data is out there! More meteorology departments should do this!
1:10 is this what we also call "scattered rain showers and thunderstorm"?
I am 23 and I just found out this information, thank you.
So, it's really small localized weather that's hard to predict? Doesn't seem that bad.. Also, what if we track heat spots instead, is it viable?
Please rewatch the entire video.
My experience here, in the UK, is that the forecasts are pretty good and accurate
It's so frustrating when weather forecast says "it will be rainy tomorrow" but turned out to be fair weather all along, or vice versa. And I don't get why predict the weather for the next five days when they can't even accurately predict the weather for the next 24 hours.
The map in 2:07 is Valencia, Spain?
This was great! Thank you. Should be taught as early as in kindergarden.
Hii This is from weather forecast India 🇮🇳 we are doing it awsmm
Is it a coincidence that this is coming out after Hungarian meteorological service's head has been kicked out becouse they couldn't tell more accurately than 80% that rain will come or not ?
Exactly the same question came to my mind :)
Fun fact: a type of fungi can control rain by releasing tons of spores into the sky.
I predicted this 4 minute video would be ¼ ad,
and I was not wrong.
2:49 his hat and the ballon look like a AMOGUS ඩඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞඞ
old title: Why is predicting rain so hard?
Like Double D said, "Summer rains, you can never predict them."
Funny, I literally just did for a major North American airport…
FYI the scholarship link is broken! You embedded the end parenthesis :)
Fixed! Thanks for the heads-up.
2:12 Ey, as a Valencian I could identify our city there. Wasn’t expecting that, I am proud
What pushed you to chose Valencia?
Very nice information 👌 lots of love and support from ur new subscriber ❤️ keep going my friend 👍
They better not be wrong about the week straight of rain starting tomorrow because I am DONE with back to back heatwaves abusing me and my lack of AC because this heat does not belong here! >:c
Forcasts for this week have changed so much even on an hourly basis, i get the amount of variables, must be nice to get paid to guess.
It'll be awesome when our civilization gets to a point in existence where we can control the weather so we could know exactly what time it will rain and when the sun will shine. That will be mind-blowing to our generation.
HAARP
I remember a day in 4th grade when it would rain for 10-20 minutes then be sunny the water would evaporate off the hot asphalt and then it would rain again, I think i counted atleast 8 cycles in just the time I was at school
Noone gave minuteearth a memo about orographic rain
Something that would be very interesting is to combine “why are weather forecasts so bad” with a video on confirmation bias. People only remember when the weather is worse than expected, and rarely when it’s correct, or even better than expected. Also, people misinterpret probability of precipitation all the time. If the POP is 10% and it rains…was the forecast “wrong”? No…there still was a 10% chance of it happening and it did. But you’ll put that into your memory as a “wrong forecast”.
Here in sweden 9 out of 10 times they exaggerate the total rain/snow amounts by at least 3-4 times, maybe they calculated that global warming with the increase of 6% more absolute humidity levels would rise the precipitation amount more than it haved.
Ok but the fronts are so cute and i will never trust a weather forecast again unless they use faces to tell me where the air is coming from
The drawings are so good..
Is this worse in America and car centric society because large parking lots and asphalt roads heat up well?
The forecasts are so bad nowadays that you literally can bet money they'll be 100% wrong. I remember growing up you could rely on the local on the 8s, they'd be right about the storms sweeping through the area in the evening. Now they just predict a chance of rain all day just to cover their rears. And it changes every hour.
How the weather “forecast” in New Mexico works: Use the hourly updates as the forecast. Works every time!! 🤔👍
Is this to explain seatle?
Valencia, Spain !
i'm not sure if it can help any but here in Denmark we have an old saying the roughly translates to: if the sky looks like a sheeps belly it wil rain within 3 days. and i can recall a time for thats not been true for the past 10 years
2:08 that's Valencia right there
you guys get rain year round?
It's almost like we don't have 80 different ways of compensating for small variables and most of our monitoring equipment isn't covering most of the ground so we have to do a boat load of guesswork on certain types of predictions
Oh? Underrepresented groups? By what metric?
And... did they say diverse perspectives? So are they actually giving scholarships based on said perceptions, or are they just assuming that everyone of a "group" just has the same perspective?
I'm sure there are definitely absolutely no connotations to saying that members of a "group" all think the same.
I was just ranting about this today!
I don't like heavy sunshine either, so I just always have an umbrella. XD
Before COVID, google forecast were really accurate. But now if it says 90% chance of rain, it never rains and when it says 10%, it always rains.
These animation are really good
YAYYY THE FRONTS ARE SO CUTE!!!
FirstI love your videos they’re so cool and they inspire me to make videos
This video is the one on this channel that screams Melbourne the most
And this is why the London E-Prix (Formula E) was abruptly ended by a huge crash caused by unexpected rainfall on half of the track...
Now everything makes sense
2:54 had to check the captions since I heard: "and war" 😅
That city map shown was from my home city, Valencia! 😱 Funny
That could explain why it always seems to rain on Memorial Day in Illinois where I live. My mom said it was because God wants people to stay inside and think of the troops instead of partying.
2:09 València
Didn't expect that lol