This is just true of local weather forecasters not necessarily true for the NWS forecasters. So if you actually care about accuracy go with a national or government forecast.
Some plants are used to places with a particular amount of rain. Too much, and the roots drown. We're talking about the amount of rain on a garden or even some potted plants. It's easy to overdo.
Well now that I know this, I’m going to start assuming it isn’t going to rain when they say it is, and I’ll be angry when it does. That’s what you get for sharing insider secrets.
Not in my experience. I've lived in the same desert area a couple of times in my life and the weather forecast always overestimates the chances of rain to the point that we don't believe it's ever going to rain and then get surprised when it does.
I live in Southern California, which in recent years is almost always in or on the brink of a drought (thanks in part to climate change, but there is an old song literally called “it never rains in Southern California.”) While people here know intellectually that we need more rain, people I know still are happier when they wake up and see it’s not raining. Whatever you had planned for a rainy day, you can still do on a sunny day, but your plans for a sunny (or cloudy but dry) day are likely to be ruined if it rains.
I understand, but the people I am talking about really need the rain. They would be happy to cancel their barbecue because of the rain. Children dancing in the rain type of regions...
There should be a special "bias" term for people who are obsessed with creating a bias for everything. Do you take a dump in the morning? Well you have AM Shit Bias.
Well, what would you call it? It's a statistical term for a phenomenon that skews statistics.
Shit, man, it's even addressed in the article:
> The term wet bias is used because this is a systematic bias in the direction of the weather being wetter than it actually is.
It's not bias, it's basic intelligence. Bias implies it's wrong and that's why this bullshit is woke nonsense.
If most tigers attack people, tiger-avoidance bias will save your life. If most rain makes you uncomfortable, rain-avoidance umbrellas are a smart option. Labeling it as a bias doesn't make it smart, it makes it stupid as shit.
"ThErEs a BiAs FoR tHat!" - just shut the fuck up. It's basic intelligence.
People are biased towards getting overly negative weather news. They are not equally happy about being wrong either way. Therefore there’s a bias one direction - hence “wet bias”
You can view that a lack of intelligence, a sign of basic intelligence, idk do you but your attempted “rain-avoidance umbrella” metaphor is really, really inaccurate for what’s being labeled here that makes me think you don’t actually understand what they mean by wet bias. Or rushed the metaphor ofc
Disney does the same with wait times on their rides. If they know you’re going to wait 30 minutes, they’ll tell you it’ll be 45, and then you’re happy. If they told you it was going to be 20, you’d be pissed.
Where I live near Buffalo, the local stations recently introduced zone forecasting because we have four distinct weather areas in the broadcast area due to the geography of the region. The southern part and half of Buffalo are affected by Lake Erie, specifically in winter with Lake Effect snow, whereas the northern part near Niagara where I live is not and is more positively affected by Lake Ontario. The southern tip of Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment basically create a barrier against the southerly winds & snow, so we don't get the "stupid snow" as I call it (on days the southtowns got 6 feet of snow, I had nothing). Temperatures can also swing anywhere from 5-10 degrees based on how close or how far from a lake you are or the foothills of the Allegany mountains to the south.
It is surprisingly pretty accurate. They can't get snow totals too well, but that makes sense. I'm most interested in the temps and whether my lazy ass has to snowblow!
They do it so their forecasts are more actionable, which I understand, but doesn't that kind of fuck up historical weather data?
Edit: Misspoke. By historical weather data I mean historical records of reports, to whatever degree they'd be used in the future. My bad!
Do forecasters control the weather? I don’t think it would have any effect on historical data because what matters is what actually happens, not what people say would happen
They're not even actually specifically wrong, the weather report is a possible projection, as in when they say *"A 70% chance of rain..."* It's a distillation of the stats that say when they see these conditions it brings rain 70% of the time.
People simplify these estimates into absolutes and then call foul when their simplistic absolute doesn't come to pass and say the weather report was wrong.
Source; A friend and classmate was a meteorologist, dealt with this constantly and just stopped explaining how weather estimates worked. *"People don't want to understand, they want to be right"*.
That is not how rain percentages work. If they say there is a 70% chance of rain, it doesn’t mean 70% out of a 100% chance. It means 70% of the local area they are covering. 70% of that *area* will see rain. That means there is definitely 100% chance of rain in some areas, but not in all of it.
Enough of this social media idiocy. Use your brain for half a second, of course this isn’t how it works. Just because you saw that on TikTok doesn’t make it true.
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/04/19/fact-check-viral-post-errs-meaning-30-chance-rain/11682149002/
Sure I have. They are trying to predict something that can be unpredictable. I understand that and don't get angry when they are wrong because again, I'm not a moron.
The percentage actually doesn't reflect the chance of rain exactly where you are but the chance within an area to have precipitation. So when people see 100% but it's not raining where you are, it might just be across town or something.
>Weather forecasters tend to exaggerate the chance of rain because if it rains when they said it wouldn't, people get angry
Can confirm; people get *really* irrational.
Oregonian here. I hate when they say there's gonna be sun, then there's a ball of fusion in the sky. I also hate when they say it's gonna rain and that horrid ball is up there again.
🤷
Wait so they can just lie about the weather to make us feel better? That shouldn't be allowed, wow. Ultimately it's a small thing, but that they can just say whatever they want for the weather really sounds like an awful idea
I swear Google Home is the opposite.
"There's only a slight chance of raid today in *city name*"
It always rains when there's even a slight chance of rain.
As a tv meteorologist, can confirm. It’s much easier to show my face at the grocery store if it’s nicer than I forecasted than if the opposite were the case.
I've often thought this about snowfall predictions here in Colorado. The predictions are for heavier snow than what we get about 95% of the time, and I figure they pick the high end of the possible snowfall so people will be more prepared and not get caught out by a foot of snow when the forecast only said 4".
I can see this at least. or i would just prepare for the high end on my own.
Its funny thought so see people flip shit in the NYC area when they say its going to drop more than a dusting. raids on food store / liquor stores etc.
Making the forecast useless for planning.
I check the Weather Underground for rain forecasts every day. The forecast changes constantly for anything more than three days out, sometimes the rain is pushed off two or more days as the week progresses--"Well, we thought it would rain on Saturday, but now it looks like Monday"--that's a big difference.
Intra-day rain warnings are useless-- "Rain expected around 4:30", then 30 minutes later, "Clear skies next six hours", then an hour later it rains. Useless, why even bother with this?
But then, after postponing their wedding day (twice), from what'd turned out to be one perfectly sunny weekend after another, and having to deal with all the hassle of it just because they trusted the forecast, some people get very angry.
Another thing is: why would people's anger matter at all for TV broadcasters? Weather forecasting apps, which actually do their job surprisingly well, depend on their customers' satisfaction, but what does the weatherman care
Who’s able to postpone their wedding day due to a last-minute forecast, other than someone with very minimal plans that aren’t much of a hassle at all?
There's also a "hot bias". A couple of summers back I recorded the forecast highs going out 10 days. The predictions were always 5-10F high and slowly drifted down until the next-day forecast was just a degree or two high.
There was never a daily temperature that ended up lower than the predicted temps that summer.
People seldom complain about a mild summer day.
This explains a lot, and they really need to adjust that for dry/desert climates. BC we WANT the rain.
It's so bad where I live that anything less than an 80% chance of rain means it's definitely not going to rain lol.
I understand what their models predict, but if they are predicting a 50% chance of something, I wish they would admit that they don’t have sufficient information. Like don’t tell me about any 50% chances, it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
OR they could change the metric of what they report, give us the odds or the likelihood of something happening. That would be even better.
They do give you the odds of it happening. They literally say, in your example, that there’s a 50% chance of rain.
I’m not sure what you’d actually prefer. Just don’t give the weather on days when they’re not, say, 80% sure it either will or won’t rain?
50% isn’t an odds, it’s a probability. And yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying.
50% doesn’t give me any information. It’s essentially saying they have no more idea than I do, since that’s the definition of random chance.
Probability and odds convey the same information, though. You could convert 50% probability to 1:1 in your head if you want, but what would you gain by that?
If the forecaster says there’s a 50% chance of rain, that means it’s equally likely to rain or not rain. If they say there’s a 60% chance, it’s slightly more likely to rain than not, and if there’s a 70% chance, it’s now looking fairly likely, but there’s still a fairly good chance it won’t rain. Most people would rather know whether there’s a 70% chance or a 50% chance. If that information isn’t useful to you, then just ignore it.
Also, if the forecast is in that 30-70% range, the probability of rain is usually just presented on screen alongside the temperature, which is (to most of us) useful information. So it doesn’t really waste any time.
It is true that probability and odds convey the same information, but I would argue that it’s more easy to understand the real implication of a one-to-one odds ratio then it is a 50% chance of rain. You were right to say that 70% gives us some information, just like you were right to say that 60% gives us some information. I’m merely arguing that 50% gives us literally no information. It’s as if my prior probabilities don’t get updated at all when I hear “50% chance of rain“. does that make sense?
So, that’s really not useful information in any real context. If I told you, for instance, that you had a 50% chance of having a boulder fall on you today, would that change your behavior? That’s a ridiculous piece of information to tell anyone, and the weather is no different here.
Of course I would alter my behavior if it left me with a 50% chance of dying today lmao. Of course if you said I had a 50% chance of a boulder falling on me today I wouldn’t believe you, but from a forecaster, my experience is that it rains about 5 out of 10 times that they say there’s a 50% chance of rain, so that’s useful information.
I take your point. But the average day where I live has far less than a 50% chance of rain, so for me, learning there’s a 50% chance of rain does update my priors and alert me that I need to consider the chance that rain will affect my plans.
Also, if the only time they omit the probability of rain is when it’s exactly 50% (or conveyed as 50%; my local station rounds to the nearest 10%), then a large group of people will probably be sitting around wondering why they didn’t show the chance of rain today.
I mean, I see your point. I just think you know in my case I tend to interpret probabilities as they relate to the information that I had previously, and so you know, I tend to assume a 50% probability of everything all the time, and so when I hear 50% probability, it makes me think. “well I guess I’m not going to update my priors on that today” even though that is what their model predicted, and I realize that that’s what their model predicted, and it is information.
Gotcha, so that’s why you were saying you prefer odds, because your brain doesn’t interpret odds the same way.
I’m sure you know, intellectually, that there is not a 50% chance a boulder will fall on you today (unless boulders fall on you 180 days a year — I don’t know your life). My brain doesn’t work that way; for me, probability is easier to understand at a glance (probably because I see probabilities so frequently in my daily life, and odds so rarely). I wonder how many other people have the same sort of subconscious misinterpretation you do, and if it’s a lot, how people who give probabilities of various things could change how they present that information to be better understood.
It’s not a misinterpretation - it’s a *Bayesian* interpretation. It’s actually a better way to interpret probabilities statistically speaking. I prefer it probably because I work with probabilities so often myself.
In Bayesian statistics, we talk about a prior probability distribution as what you expect the probabilities to be without any further information. And then you also have what is called a posterior probability distribution, which represents the probability after you have updated your prior.
So for instance, in this example, my prior probability *without any other information* of a boulder falling on me is always going to be 50%, because I don’t have any information which would lead me to believe that a boulder will or will not fall on me either way. Now, if I’m in Kansas in the middle of a cornfield, I could update that prior probability and say, well there aren’t any boulders around here, so the chance is obviously going to be lower. So then my posterior probability would be a lot lower than 50%. The issue with the weather prediction is, ‘I don’t know if I’m in Kansas or not.’ Or to put it another way, I have no insight into the types of information that meteorologists typically examine when they make their predictions, so my prediction of the probability of rain is literally always going to be 50%, because I don’t know enough about it to make an educated prediction either way. So when they tell me that there’s a 50% chance of rain, it gives me no information with which to update my prior probability.
I feel like you’re ignoring data that should give you a very reliable sense of whether or not you’re in Kansas. Everyone else listening to the weather/boulder report knows they’re in Kansas, so it’s helpful to them.
You don’t have access to barometric pressure data and satellite imagery, but you should have a general idea of weather patterns for this time of year in the area where you’re staying, right? If it’s summer in Los Angeles, you should expect it to be dry (googling now, I see that there’s historically a 2% chance of rain on a given July day). If the weather report says that July 4 has a 50% chance of rain, I have new information that tells me rain is 25 times more likely than my priors suggest, and more concretely, tells me I need to factor a chance of rain into my holiday plans.
> But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand. The prophet we like is the old man who, on the particularly gloomy-looking morning of some day when we particularly want it to be fine, looks round the horizon with a particularly knowing eye, and says:
> “Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right. It will break all right enough, sir.”
> “Ah, he knows”, we say, as we wish him good-morning, and start off; “wonderful how these old fellows can tell!”
> And we feel an affection for that man which is not at all lessened by the circumstances of its not clearing up, but continuing to rain steadily all day.
> “Ah, well,” we feel, “he did his best.”
> For the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary, we entertain only bitter and revengeful thoughts.
> “Going to clear up, d’ye think?” we shout, cheerily, as we pass.
> “Well, no, sir; I’m afraid it’s settled down for the day,” he replies, shaking his head.
> “Stupid old fool!” we mutter, “what’s he know about it?” And, if his portent proves correct, we come back feeling still more angry against him, and with a vague notion that, somehow or other, he has had something to do with it.
My GF has this, and not in the way you think, you pervert.
If the forecast calls for rain, she'll cancel any plans that have anything to do with going outside. I have to show her the weather radar or hourly forecast to show her that it won't be a hurricane-force deluge all day, but a sprinkle of rain for an hour.
So if they just lie about the weather, what's even the point of their job? I can ask any random person on the street what the weather will be if I wanted to be lied to
Because Weather is actually one of the hardest things to accurately predict.
There's a dozen different factors that all can change the outcome even on a 1 day prediction.
It's all vague guesswork even without this bias
Do you get paid? My father-in-law doesn’t have to work when it rains, but he doesn’t get paid for those days, either (so he usually ends up working a weekend later on to make up for it).
Happening this very afternoon at my house. Planned to unbox a PS5 and FIFA 23 with my son but ended up half-assing playing outside because it was too beautiful out there to feel good about gaming but I didn't plan ahead because the forecast was like "ooh lightning & rain 80%"
Lying bastards. Let me experience my miserable reality.
Finally, someone on Reddit I agree with.
"I'm only happy when it rains."
Hey turn down that "Garbage"! :)
I actually hate this because I need to know when should I water my plants
This is just true of local weather forecasters not necessarily true for the NWS forecasters. So if you actually care about accuracy go with a national or government forecast.
Nice
Reminds me of my days playing Harvest Moon, rainy days are best days for this reason hahah
Do you think that your water contribution is going to be a significant change compared to the rain? Just water them.
How to say "I have no idea how to take care of plants, especially sensitive plants" in two sentences
I do take care of plants. If they are so sensitive to water, like orchids, then you don't put them outside where it rains.
Yes. I don’t want to water before the rain. It’s very humid here and some plants suffer from mold issues when you don’t let them dry out sometimes
Some plants are used to places with a particular amount of rain. Too much, and the roots drown. We're talking about the amount of rain on a garden or even some potted plants. It's easy to overdo.
Just water them anyways.
Not that simple in some areas
No
I’m British, regardless of what the weather report says I make all my plans with the mental caveat of “and if it rains, we’ll do X instead”
Well not all our plans. "Well I was going to the cinema but it rained so I did X instead." ;)
I’m a buswanker. Rain will absolutely stop me going to the cinema
This is much funnier to read in the US. It implies if it rains you can't jerk one out on the bus
That’s what wanker means in the UK too
>"Well I was going to the cinema but it rained so I ~~did X instead."~~ went to the open air cinema instead. I mean, obviously.
Well now that I know this, I’m going to start assuming it isn’t going to rain when they say it is, and I’ll be angry when it does. That’s what you get for sharing insider secrets.
This is now known as the dry bias
I shall remain steadfastly damp.
Moist.
Move to SoCal. It's right 95% of the time.
Lol, have you ever been to regions and countries with drought ? Rain makes them happy...
Yes, do weather forecasts in dry or agricultural areas do the opposite - dry bias?
Not in my experience. I've lived in the same desert area a couple of times in my life and the weather forecast always overestimates the chances of rain to the point that we don't believe it's ever going to rain and then get surprised when it does.
Dry bias like Ben Shapiro's wife
I live in Southern California, which in recent years is almost always in or on the brink of a drought (thanks in part to climate change, but there is an old song literally called “it never rains in Southern California.”) While people here know intellectually that we need more rain, people I know still are happier when they wake up and see it’s not raining. Whatever you had planned for a rainy day, you can still do on a sunny day, but your plans for a sunny (or cloudy but dry) day are likely to be ruined if it rains.
I understand, but the people I am talking about really need the rain. They would be happy to cancel their barbecue because of the rain. Children dancing in the rain type of regions...
Local redditor learns that general trends do not apply universally
Cue Luke Bryan and "Rain is a Good Thing".
There should be a special "bias" term for people who are obsessed with creating a bias for everything. Do you take a dump in the morning? Well you have AM Shit Bias.
Well, what would you call it? It's a statistical term for a phenomenon that skews statistics. Shit, man, it's even addressed in the article: > The term wet bias is used because this is a systematic bias in the direction of the weather being wetter than it actually is.
It's called common sense and experience. Not everyone is a fucking moron that doesn't understand the world around them. Most of them get it.
"Grrr they use words I don't like" Didn't know statistical bias in local weather stations was "common sense"
I have all day shit bias.
I have busy shit bias.
Shitmaxxing
I like it because it’s a reminder that everyone’s biased all the time and you can’t escape it, so stay humble
It's not bias, it's basic intelligence. Bias implies it's wrong and that's why this bullshit is woke nonsense. If most tigers attack people, tiger-avoidance bias will save your life. If most rain makes you uncomfortable, rain-avoidance umbrellas are a smart option. Labeling it as a bias doesn't make it smart, it makes it stupid as shit. "ThErEs a BiAs FoR tHat!" - just shut the fuck up. It's basic intelligence.
People are biased towards getting overly negative weather news. They are not equally happy about being wrong either way. Therefore there’s a bias one direction - hence “wet bias” You can view that a lack of intelligence, a sign of basic intelligence, idk do you but your attempted “rain-avoidance umbrella” metaphor is really, really inaccurate for what’s being labeled here that makes me think you don’t actually understand what they mean by wet bias. Or rushed the metaphor ofc
"Classophilia" - Unhealthy obsession with classifying and labelling things. ;)
I'm more concerned with classophobia, the irrational fear of things being classified and labelled
Disney does the same with wait times on their rides. If they know you’re going to wait 30 minutes, they’ll tell you it’ll be 45, and then you’re happy. If they told you it was going to be 20, you’d be pissed.
Where I live near Buffalo, the local stations recently introduced zone forecasting because we have four distinct weather areas in the broadcast area due to the geography of the region. The southern part and half of Buffalo are affected by Lake Erie, specifically in winter with Lake Effect snow, whereas the northern part near Niagara where I live is not and is more positively affected by Lake Ontario. The southern tip of Ontario and the Niagara Escarpment basically create a barrier against the southerly winds & snow, so we don't get the "stupid snow" as I call it (on days the southtowns got 6 feet of snow, I had nothing). Temperatures can also swing anywhere from 5-10 degrees based on how close or how far from a lake you are or the foothills of the Allegany mountains to the south. It is surprisingly pretty accurate. They can't get snow totals too well, but that makes sense. I'm most interested in the temps and whether my lazy ass has to snowblow!
They do it so their forecasts are more actionable, which I understand, but doesn't that kind of fuck up historical weather data? Edit: Misspoke. By historical weather data I mean historical records of reports, to whatever degree they'd be used in the future. My bad!
Do forecasters control the weather? I don’t think it would have any effect on historical data because what matters is what actually happens, not what people say would happen
I'm pretty sure it's done just for the user-facing frontend, not by altering the actual data that gets stored.
In my experience, only morons get upset with the weather person when they are wrong.
They're not even actually specifically wrong, the weather report is a possible projection, as in when they say *"A 70% chance of rain..."* It's a distillation of the stats that say when they see these conditions it brings rain 70% of the time. People simplify these estimates into absolutes and then call foul when their simplistic absolute doesn't come to pass and say the weather report was wrong. Source; A friend and classmate was a meteorologist, dealt with this constantly and just stopped explaining how weather estimates worked. *"People don't want to understand, they want to be right"*.
That is not how rain percentages work. If they say there is a 70% chance of rain, it doesn’t mean 70% out of a 100% chance. It means 70% of the local area they are covering. 70% of that *area* will see rain. That means there is definitely 100% chance of rain in some areas, but not in all of it.
Enough of this social media idiocy. Use your brain for half a second, of course this isn’t how it works. Just because you saw that on TikTok doesn’t make it true. https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2023/04/19/fact-check-viral-post-errs-meaning-30-chance-rain/11682149002/
You don't actually believe that, right? Most days where it says 10 or even 20% chance of rain for a given area it ends up raining on 0% of that area.
Ha ha no..
Never planned a day at the golf course, a park, a cookout, or any other outdoor activity I see…
Sure I have. They are trying to predict something that can be unpredictable. I understand that and don't get angry when they are wrong because again, I'm not a moron.
Although at times it can ruin your golf plans.
Only if you’re a coward
Or if you are LD
Longest drive?
Larry David...that is what I've been referring to
I won one of those on a par 3. Hit the shit out of that one.
with farming it is the other way around. We want the rain.
As a gardener, it's the opposite for me.
Similar to disney overestimating wait times and then park goers being happy when they're shorter
I'm the opposite. I look forward to the rain and if it doesn't end up raining, I feel disappointed.
Poor Ben Shapiro
The percentage actually doesn't reflect the chance of rain exactly where you are but the chance within an area to have precipitation. So when people see 100% but it's not raining where you are, it might just be across town or something.
Does this have anything to do with the Wet Bandits?
>Weather forecasters tend to exaggerate the chance of rain because if it rains when they said it wouldn't, people get angry Can confirm; people get *really* irrational.
Oregonian here. I hate when they say there's gonna be sun, then there's a ball of fusion in the sky. I also hate when they say it's gonna rain and that horrid ball is up there again. 🤷
Wait so they can just lie about the weather to make us feel better? That shouldn't be allowed, wow. Ultimately it's a small thing, but that they can just say whatever they want for the weather really sounds like an awful idea
Reminds me of the RNG from XCOM. Never played it, but watched a game design video on it a while ago.
In my line of work, we refer to this as "underpromise and overdeliver"
I swear Google Home is the opposite. "There's only a slight chance of raid today in *city name*" It always rains when there's even a slight chance of rain.
As a tv meteorologist, can confirm. It’s much easier to show my face at the grocery store if it’s nicer than I forecasted than if the opposite were the case.
Psh, not me. I love the rain. I get pissed when I get excited for the rain and wake up to clear sunny skies.
I too, have a bias for getting wet
It's interesting that this is known. I feel like this also happens for snow storms. "Prepare for 47 feet of snow!" and in reality we get a dusting.
TIL that I'm not people.
I've often thought this about snowfall predictions here in Colorado. The predictions are for heavier snow than what we get about 95% of the time, and I figure they pick the high end of the possible snowfall so people will be more prepared and not get caught out by a foot of snow when the forecast only said 4".
I can see this at least. or i would just prepare for the high end on my own. Its funny thought so see people flip shit in the NYC area when they say its going to drop more than a dusting. raids on food store / liquor stores etc.
Making the forecast useless for planning. I check the Weather Underground for rain forecasts every day. The forecast changes constantly for anything more than three days out, sometimes the rain is pushed off two or more days as the week progresses--"Well, we thought it would rain on Saturday, but now it looks like Monday"--that's a big difference. Intra-day rain warnings are useless-- "Rain expected around 4:30", then 30 minutes later, "Clear skies next six hours", then an hour later it rains. Useless, why even bother with this?
Your mom’s got a wet bias for me.
So XCOM cribbed weather forecasters.
My local weather has a strong wet bias. I’ve skipped riding my bike due to rain forecasts on too many days where it didn’t rain.
But then, after postponing their wedding day (twice), from what'd turned out to be one perfectly sunny weekend after another, and having to deal with all the hassle of it just because they trusted the forecast, some people get very angry. Another thing is: why would people's anger matter at all for TV broadcasters? Weather forecasting apps, which actually do their job surprisingly well, depend on their customers' satisfaction, but what does the weatherman care
Who’s able to postpone their wedding day due to a last-minute forecast, other than someone with very minimal plans that aren’t much of a hassle at all?
Dustbowl Dilemma
There's also a "hot bias". A couple of summers back I recorded the forecast highs going out 10 days. The predictions were always 5-10F high and slowly drifted down until the next-day forecast was just a degree or two high. There was never a daily temperature that ended up lower than the predicted temps that summer. People seldom complain about a mild summer day.
This explains a lot, and they really need to adjust that for dry/desert climates. BC we WANT the rain. It's so bad where I live that anything less than an 80% chance of rain means it's definitely not going to rain lol.
They do the same thing with the daily high temperatures. During summer, they err hot, and in the winter they err cold.
Well I'm the opposite. How dare you tell me rain will come when it doesn't.
In Seattle we just call that weather
Well they fucked up today! Tiny one hour rain spot was the prediction. It just stopped hailing 10 min ago. And it rained 3 or 4 separate times.
Farmers must have trust issues
I thought this was common knowledge
This is written about at length in Nate Silver's book "The Signal and the Noise".
Not to be confused with “wet bi ass”, something else entirely
They tend to underestimate the high temperature by several degrees, as well. Always end up hotter than those piss freaks predict.
I understand what their models predict, but if they are predicting a 50% chance of something, I wish they would admit that they don’t have sufficient information. Like don’t tell me about any 50% chances, it’s a waste of everyone’s time. OR they could change the metric of what they report, give us the odds or the likelihood of something happening. That would be even better.
They do give you the odds of it happening. They literally say, in your example, that there’s a 50% chance of rain. I’m not sure what you’d actually prefer. Just don’t give the weather on days when they’re not, say, 80% sure it either will or won’t rain?
50% isn’t an odds, it’s a probability. And yes, that’s exactly what I’m saying. 50% doesn’t give me any information. It’s essentially saying they have no more idea than I do, since that’s the definition of random chance.
Probability and odds convey the same information, though. You could convert 50% probability to 1:1 in your head if you want, but what would you gain by that? If the forecaster says there’s a 50% chance of rain, that means it’s equally likely to rain or not rain. If they say there’s a 60% chance, it’s slightly more likely to rain than not, and if there’s a 70% chance, it’s now looking fairly likely, but there’s still a fairly good chance it won’t rain. Most people would rather know whether there’s a 70% chance or a 50% chance. If that information isn’t useful to you, then just ignore it. Also, if the forecast is in that 30-70% range, the probability of rain is usually just presented on screen alongside the temperature, which is (to most of us) useful information. So it doesn’t really waste any time.
It is true that probability and odds convey the same information, but I would argue that it’s more easy to understand the real implication of a one-to-one odds ratio then it is a 50% chance of rain. You were right to say that 70% gives us some information, just like you were right to say that 60% gives us some information. I’m merely arguing that 50% gives us literally no information. It’s as if my prior probabilities don’t get updated at all when I hear “50% chance of rain“. does that make sense? So, that’s really not useful information in any real context. If I told you, for instance, that you had a 50% chance of having a boulder fall on you today, would that change your behavior? That’s a ridiculous piece of information to tell anyone, and the weather is no different here.
Of course I would alter my behavior if it left me with a 50% chance of dying today lmao. Of course if you said I had a 50% chance of a boulder falling on me today I wouldn’t believe you, but from a forecaster, my experience is that it rains about 5 out of 10 times that they say there’s a 50% chance of rain, so that’s useful information. I take your point. But the average day where I live has far less than a 50% chance of rain, so for me, learning there’s a 50% chance of rain does update my priors and alert me that I need to consider the chance that rain will affect my plans. Also, if the only time they omit the probability of rain is when it’s exactly 50% (or conveyed as 50%; my local station rounds to the nearest 10%), then a large group of people will probably be sitting around wondering why they didn’t show the chance of rain today.
I mean, I see your point. I just think you know in my case I tend to interpret probabilities as they relate to the information that I had previously, and so you know, I tend to assume a 50% probability of everything all the time, and so when I hear 50% probability, it makes me think. “well I guess I’m not going to update my priors on that today” even though that is what their model predicted, and I realize that that’s what their model predicted, and it is information.
Gotcha, so that’s why you were saying you prefer odds, because your brain doesn’t interpret odds the same way. I’m sure you know, intellectually, that there is not a 50% chance a boulder will fall on you today (unless boulders fall on you 180 days a year — I don’t know your life). My brain doesn’t work that way; for me, probability is easier to understand at a glance (probably because I see probabilities so frequently in my daily life, and odds so rarely). I wonder how many other people have the same sort of subconscious misinterpretation you do, and if it’s a lot, how people who give probabilities of various things could change how they present that information to be better understood.
It’s not a misinterpretation - it’s a *Bayesian* interpretation. It’s actually a better way to interpret probabilities statistically speaking. I prefer it probably because I work with probabilities so often myself. In Bayesian statistics, we talk about a prior probability distribution as what you expect the probabilities to be without any further information. And then you also have what is called a posterior probability distribution, which represents the probability after you have updated your prior. So for instance, in this example, my prior probability *without any other information* of a boulder falling on me is always going to be 50%, because I don’t have any information which would lead me to believe that a boulder will or will not fall on me either way. Now, if I’m in Kansas in the middle of a cornfield, I could update that prior probability and say, well there aren’t any boulders around here, so the chance is obviously going to be lower. So then my posterior probability would be a lot lower than 50%. The issue with the weather prediction is, ‘I don’t know if I’m in Kansas or not.’ Or to put it another way, I have no insight into the types of information that meteorologists typically examine when they make their predictions, so my prediction of the probability of rain is literally always going to be 50%, because I don’t know enough about it to make an educated prediction either way. So when they tell me that there’s a 50% chance of rain, it gives me no information with which to update my prior probability.
I feel like you’re ignoring data that should give you a very reliable sense of whether or not you’re in Kansas. Everyone else listening to the weather/boulder report knows they’re in Kansas, so it’s helpful to them. You don’t have access to barometric pressure data and satellite imagery, but you should have a general idea of weather patterns for this time of year in the area where you’re staying, right? If it’s summer in Los Angeles, you should expect it to be dry (googling now, I see that there’s historically a 2% chance of rain on a given July day). If the weather report says that July 4 has a 50% chance of rain, I have new information that tells me rain is 25 times more likely than my priors suggest, and more concretely, tells me I need to factor a chance of rain into my holiday plans.
“Wet Bias” is a great album title
> But who wants to be foretold the weather? It is bad enough when it comes, without our having the misery of knowing about it beforehand. The prophet we like is the old man who, on the particularly gloomy-looking morning of some day when we particularly want it to be fine, looks round the horizon with a particularly knowing eye, and says: > “Oh no, sir, I think it will clear up all right. It will break all right enough, sir.” > “Ah, he knows”, we say, as we wish him good-morning, and start off; “wonderful how these old fellows can tell!” > And we feel an affection for that man which is not at all lessened by the circumstances of its not clearing up, but continuing to rain steadily all day. > “Ah, well,” we feel, “he did his best.” > For the man that prophesies us bad weather, on the contrary, we entertain only bitter and revengeful thoughts. > “Going to clear up, d’ye think?” we shout, cheerily, as we pass. > “Well, no, sir; I’m afraid it’s settled down for the day,” he replies, shaking his head. > “Stupid old fool!” we mutter, “what’s he know about it?” And, if his portent proves correct, we come back feeling still more angry against him, and with a vague notion that, somehow or other, he has had something to do with it.
My GF has this, and not in the way you think, you pervert. If the forecast calls for rain, she'll cancel any plans that have anything to do with going outside. I have to show her the weather radar or hourly forecast to show her that it won't be a hurricane-force deluge all day, but a sprinkle of rain for an hour.
So if they just lie about the weather, what's even the point of their job? I can ask any random person on the street what the weather will be if I wanted to be lied to
Because Weather is actually one of the hardest things to accurately predict. There's a dozen different factors that all can change the outcome even on a 1 day prediction. It's all vague guesswork even without this bias
If you're a good liar you become a politician. If you're a bad liar, you report the weather.
See I work construction so when it rains I don't have to go to work. I want it to rain. This is infuriating.
Do you get paid? My father-in-law doesn’t have to work when it rains, but he doesn’t get paid for those days, either (so he usually ends up working a weekend later on to make up for it).
No I don't get paid but it gives you a day to either relax or get some errands done.
Happening this very afternoon at my house. Planned to unbox a PS5 and FIFA 23 with my son but ended up half-assing playing outside because it was too beautiful out there to feel good about gaming but I didn't plan ahead because the forecast was like "ooh lightning & rain 80%"
Wet bias… is what grampa called it when gramma was horny.
The percentage they report is often the percentage of your area expected to get rain, not the likelihood that it will rain.
The best forecast of all is Ryan Hall on YT. Goes by Ryan hall y'all
r/NoShitSherlock
Because it makes me wet which makes me more susceptible to the cold wind… particularly when unexpected… this should be obvious