17 September 2019, Hessen, Rüsselsheim: ILLUSTRATION - Apple's weather app can be seen on a ... [+] smartphone display. Photo: Silas Stein/dpa (Photo by Silas Stein/picture alliance via Getty Images)
dpa/picture alliance via Getty ImagesI took my seat at the University of Georgia - University of Oregon football game this weekend, and the person seated to the left of me initiated small talk. After learning that I was the director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and a meteorologist, she said, “Maybe you can tell me why the forecast was so wrong today, my App said....” It was an innocent question, but one that I (and many of my colleagues) are intimately familiar with. Because it wasn’t raining at the stadium, she felt the forecast was wrong. Here are four mistakes that I often hear about when people consume information from Weather Apps.
The first mistake is the long-standing misunderstanding of “percent chance of rain.” The National Weather Service - Atlanta explains a 40 percent chance of rain this way on its website - “The "Probability of Precipitation" (PoP) simply describes the probability that the forecast grid/point in question will receive at least 0.01 inches of rain. So, in this example, there is a 40 percent probability for at least 0.01 inches of rain at the specific forecast point of interest!” More specifically, the National Weather Service website goes on to explain, “(1) If the forecaster was 80% certain that rain would develop but only expected to cover 50% of the forecast area, then the forecast would read "a 40% chance of rain" for any given location. (2) If the forecaster expected a widespread area of precipitation with 100% coverage to approach, but he/she was only 40% certain that it would reach the forecast area, this would, as well, result in a "40% chance of rain" at any given location in the forecast area.” The PoP is calculated by multiplying the weather forecaster’s certainty (C) that precipitation will occur (form or move int the area) by areal coverage (A) expected. An adjustment factor is made by shifting the decimal point two places to the left.
IN SPACE - SEPTEMBER 18: This is a handout of a NOAA Doppler radar image of Hurricane Isabel taken ... [+] September 18, 2003, at 12:08 p.m. EDT. The NOAA National Hurricane Center in Miami, reports that at 11 a.m. EDT the center of Hurricane Isabel was located near latitude 34.4 north, longitude 75.7 west or about 55 miles south of Cape Hatteras, N.C. (Photo by NOAA via Getty Images)
Getty ImagesThe second mistake that many people tend to make with Apps is related to duration. There seems to be an assumption, as my meteorology colleague Bill Crosson noted on my social media page, that an 80% chance of rain translates in the minds of many people that it is going to rain “all day.” If you consume the definition properly, the 0.01 inches of rainfall might happen early in the morning, over the course of a few hours, or later in the evening.
A third mistake, related to the first two, is the assumption that the forecast is the same for every single place in the area. On typical summer days around here, it can be sunny at my house and raining at my son’s school a few miles away. The combination of probability, evolving weather, and how it is distributed across an area is difficult to synthesize into an icon on our smart watch or phone.
Detail of a Suunto 7 smartwatch, taken on February 14, 2020. (Photo by Neil Godwin/Future Publishing ... [+] via Getty Images)
Future Publishing via Getty ImagesThe final mistake is related to evolving weather itself. Many people look at their Weather App icon, and it might have a sunny icon or a rainy cloud with a lightning flash. However, that static representation of the weather is not suitable for dynamically-evolving weather situations, particularly severe weather. It is important, in dangerous weather situations, to understand the evolving threat. One strength of many Apps is the weather radar. They are useful for identifying precipitation or storm location and evolution. Many of them even have lightning flash locaters too. I also highly recommend that your Wireless Emergency Alerts are activated during severe weather or that you have a weather alert App enabled.
Look, I am a meteorologist. I can assess weather for myself using various tools. However, I do have a couple of Weather Apps on my phone. I am not anti-Weather App. This short essay is intended to caution you about how to use them and to not trash the forecast because you didn’t understand how to consume the information presented to you.
At the end of the day, the weather information from your App is not coming from the “App Fairy.” It is based on weather observations, numerical weather models, and professional analysis. It is also incumbent that weather information providers move beyond the “inertia of practice.” In other words, we have a lot of jargon and terms of practice in the weather enterprise that are absolutely meaningless to the general population. Know your audience.
Florida, smart phone tornado alert warning. (Photo by: Jeffrey Greenberg/Universal Images Group via ... [+] Getty Images)
Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Last updated on 07 February, 2022
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The Weather Channel App used to be a great App. Now I find it difficult to even open. I touch to open and it immediately closes, so I have to tap a second time. It then takes 20-30 seconds to open. Once the app is open an Upgrade to Premium screen appears first (for a fee). It freezes as I’m using it and I have to close and reopen to get it to work. See steps above that have to be repeated when it freezes. It is slow to respond to screen swiping or moving from one to another. When viewing the radar section in the app and animating the forecast there was a digital clock showing time as it advances. This is no longer available. I’m constantly barraged with adds and upgrade requests to the premium version. If I move out of the app and come back, it is frozen and Will close by itself forcing me to re-open. See steps above for re-opening the app. All in all what once was my go to for temp, precip, forecast, and other weather information this has become a lesson in frustration and not an enjoyable experience. This has been happening not only on my phone but with others I’ve discussed this with.
Although I’ve updated the app and my phone as well, it seems to be getting worse and worse.
This weather app is significantly more detailed and accurate than the pre-installed Apple weather app. It has been my weather app of choice for years. But now, they’ve really amped up all the ads. I could maybe look over that if I didn’t end up getting notification after notification of these random stupid “news” stories that so have no interest in. There’s no way to turn off these notifications and I can get up to like 10 notifications a day about random stuff that isn’t even weather related the vast majority of the time. When in the app I have to scroll so far down past so many ads to try to see all the different weather information available. It’s very frustrating and I get that it’s a free app, but with the pandemic causing a lot less travel for myself, I think I might go ahead and delete this now annoying app even though I really liked it because I’d rather just use the regular weather app that has minimal information but no annoying notifications or ads, and if I need a radar or something I’ll just go online to my local news websites and view their weather information. If you could just AT LEAST turn off those useless notifications that I never said yes to, that would be great, but unfortunately there is no option for me to do that so as long as I have the app installed I will continue to receive these useless news notifications more frequently than I am provided any weather notifications.
1) as time has gone on it has become more of like a social media platform - the social media. People that are just trying to check the weather are not trying to sit through a 30 second add to do so. And I’m not paying for “pro”2) stemming off of the 1st point. You are focusing more on pushing content than accurately predicting the weather. If you spent your time and resources on accuracy it would work out better seeing as you call yourself the “weather channel” accuweather does not force ads on you. It does not have an endless stream of videos sitting where you should just be able to view the weather. And they are more accurate. 3) accuracy. The weather channel over exaggerates everything weather but under estimates. If people actually used the weather channel for what is going to happen the next day and plan accordingly. You’d be screwed 90 percent of the time because they are only correct 10 percent of the time.
Example. It’s 9 p.m. and there is a 100 percent chance of rain at 7 a.m. you wake up. No clouds it’s 7. Birds are chirping. “Storms possible at 11 turns into 2 turns into. Wait. Ya’ll thought it was going to rain?” Meanwhile. If you just looked at weatherbug accuweather you’d be better off. At 9 p.m. they both know no weather is coming in at 7 a.m. they don’t just keep adjusting all day and guessing. They use the technology we have at our disposal to make a way more educated guess than weatherchannel.
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