:nana:  :nana:  :nana:  :nana:

20% chance turns in to rains on and off all afternoon.....

When they say 20% chance of rain, I figure it is going to rain 20% of my day...that is 10% on my way into work and the other 10% on my way home. Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.

http://www.weather.com/weather/local/93277?lswe=93277&lwsa=WeatherLocalUndeclared

:nana:

http://weather.yahoo.com/forecast/USCA0013.html

Looking to be a pretty damn nice weekend here. :nana:

doesn't that just mean a one-in-five chance that it will rain?  It's not a prediction that it will rain 20% of the day.  Seems like you and the weatherman need to work on communication.

Sorry, just having a Davipu moment.

It sucks, I got rain all week over here.

Quote from: raylarrabeedoesn't that just mean a one-in-five chance that it will rain?  It's not a prediction that it will rain 20% of the day.  Seems like you and the weatherman need to work on communication.

Sorry, just having a Davipu moment.

At long last, that meteorology course I had to take for my geology degree pays off!!

raylarrabee is right, the percentage is the chance that any particular point in the region will experience rain at any time during the day.  It contains no information regarding the duration or intensity of the rainfall... so there  

Meteorology isn't easy.  That's why most local weather-persons leave the bulk of the forecasting work to NOAA.  Most local forecasts are the NOAA standard tweaked just a little bit to make them look different from the other station's forecast.

I love how the weather guys in Seattle try to make the weather interesting.  "Rain, changing to showers in the afternoon."  "Showers today, with rain predicted in the evening."  If they predict showers and we get rain, man, it screws up my day!


From what my nonmeteorologist mind understands, the Puget Sound is a convergence zone - ocean air coming in over the Olympics, air from the east being battered over the Cascades, yadda - so weather predicition is still more of an art than a science.  But forecasting rain is never a bad bet.

my two cents,   seattle stinks.

I doubt it stinks as bad as pittsburgh... now that is a nasty town, my wife is from that area, in fact, I'm riding the gs to greensburg tomorrow back home on sunday.

vtlion is correct.  I'm a retired meteorologist.  Yes, forecasting isn't easy.  

Where I worked they wanted to know cloud cover amount, ceiling height, visibility, temperature, dewpoint, humidity, precipitation type and intensity, pressure, and any changes to any of the those down to a 15 minute period.  For example: If the cloud cover went from scattered (less than 50% coverage to broken (more than 50%) it had to be in the forecast.  If the ceiling height went from 900ft to 1000ft it had to be in the forecast.  I had to tell them within a 15 minute time span when it would start or stop raining.  When a thunderstorm would form and when it would dissipate or move on.  We had to forecast all kinds of things and be VERY accurate.  Try that some day.  The TV/radio weatherman is a joke.

In Seattle you have several things happening.  You have a lot of moisture coming in from the Pacific.  It hits the Olympic peninsula and drops as rain creating the rainforest there.  If the winds are strong enough the rain will continue into the sound and over Seattle.  Sometimes you get what's called orographic lift (look it up) that will cause rain over the cascades and sometimes it backs up (packs up) over seattle and it rains in the city.  You also get a lot of winter storms that come in from the ocean.  Sorry but you get a lot of clouds and rain there.

Quote from: RoadstergalI love how the weather guys in Seattle try to make the weather interesting.

Seattle is one of the hardest places to predict...  Most areas have 1 or 2 factors to consider.  The Puget Sound area has about 15...

PLUS!  The weather in Seattle is different on the waterfront than it is in the U...  And different in the U than it is in Ballard...  And different in Bellevue, and different in North Bend.

So...  The weather report around here is just guessing for the most part.

If they say rain anywhere in the area, I assume I'll have a cloud following me wherever I go.