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"To which the fired guy replied, in essence, " Credibility? WTF- I'm a Weatherman!""

Reminds of a time many years ago when someone asked my what I did for a living. Told them I was a paid liar. You know? A weatherman. Boss chewed my ass out for over a half hour when that got back to him. All I said in response was, "People think we never get it right all I do is beat them to the draw. Not a hell of a lot they could say after that.
One time right at the end of our monsoon season the lead forecaster came out with no chance of thunderstorms. We'd been running a flyer at the end of out forecasts stating "Remember, thunderstorms can produce dangerous lightning, heavy rain and flash flooding." Well ten minutes later he calls and tells me to take it out of the forecast. I refused. He asked me on what basis did I feel there might be a storm. I told him is was just a gut feeling. He said remove it and I said back, "You want to change the forecast, do so and put your name on it." He let it stand and when my relief came in at noon he change the forecast like a good like boot licker. At two PM that afternoon there was a thunderstorm on the back side of the Catalina Mountains and there was a flash flood killing two hikers. I dunno. To this day by all rights there should not have been any chance of a storm but my gut said otherwise. I'll just add that the Vigaro hit the Mixmaster on that deal and we had people from the regional office down and somebody's head was gonna roll. All I can add is there was one very red faced Meteorologist when the smoke cleared.
Paul B.

That's the rub, Paul. Forecast dangerous weather and people think you're loony when it doesn't happen. But forecast mild and then somebody gets hurt or worse, and then they howl that you didn't warn them. It's probably better to cry wolf than shrug and let people get killed.

Our local guy, San Antonio, does a helluva a job.

I once wrote one of our local weathermen, who has since moved on to something else, about the fact that there are weather watches and warnings issued pretty much from the end of March to the start of November. He said that a number of years ago, during the Clinton administration if I remember correctly, a tornado came out of nowhere in Alabama. The National Weather Circus was told that that would never happen again, hence the constant running in circles yelling that the sky is falling.

My app on the iPhone is pretty accurate a day or two in advance. I can get a good forecast in a few seconds.

What ticks me off is the TV guys who take 5 or 10 minutes with their fancy electronic charts, telling me what the temperature was in every podunk town within 100 miles, etc. Waste of tmy time.

oh ..

You asked

This. Wx forecasting is very accurate these days IMO and I used have to pretty much live by the weather. Ya they're going to get it wrong 10% or whatever of the time. Duh! Its weather, it makes itself, eliminates it self and turns on a dime, high pressures fight low pressures there won't be a clear winner right off the bat etc etc. I think they do really well. Computer modeling has been a big boost.

Well, I know that when a watch is issued it just means that conditions are such that a storm, or potentially serious conditions could occur. Technically warnings are issued when the forecaster is pretty well convinced the bad is about to to happen.

One example. I was living in Nevada at the time and there was 6" of snow on the ground, completely overcast skies and them was a balmy 32 degrees when I went to work on the midnight shift. A t 1 AM when I went to take the weather observation the temp was 18 degrees and outside the sky was totally clear. Nor a cloud in sight and a full moon. I finished the observation and issued a hard freeze warning. The final low temp was 36 degrees below zero. We never got above 10 below zero for the next five days. What happened was the clouds moved out. With no clouds and their green house effect the temperature just radiated on out into space.

I can easily come out with a good half dozen more instances like the above but maybe you'll get the picture.
Paul B.

Anything over 24 hours is a flat-out guess...

In this area I find that weather underground does a decent job of “predicting” the weather. I use th ten day forecast as a general idea realizing that they may be able to predict a major front heading my way but may be off by a day or two.

I’ve found ScoutLook to do a good job of predicting wind direction for my tree stands- not perfect mind you, but pretty good.

I'm impressed that they get it right as often as they do.

Not that I could do any better,they're pretty damn good IMO.

Hardly.

OK, 25 hours...

You know the difference between a weatherman and a politician?













You know they're both going to lie to you - but weather forecasting is an honorable profession!