I have an issue where if I pick my local Airport the weather forecast says there is no chance of precipitation today. The airport is on the northeast corner of the town. When I log into a weather station on the southwest corner of town the forecast says there is a 70% chance of precipitation today. The airport and the station on the southwest corner of town are no more than 10 miles apart and that’s using Google driving directions. For one forecast to have a 0% chance and another 10 miles away to have a 70% chance seems rather odd to me.
Wrong Forecast
Weather Station = Central Nebraska Regional Airport
Location = Grand Island
Data Provider = NWS
Weather Station Type = National Weather Service
Right Forecast
Weather Station = Good Same Twin Homes
Location = Grand Island, NE
Data Provider = Weather Underground
Weather Station Type = Personal Weather Station
I don’t have hourly data for NWS weather stations, so the forecast is coming from Earth Networks. You’re seeing a difference since you’re comparing the forecast from different weather services (Weather Underground vs. Earth Networks).
OK, I get that, now, I think. If I understand what you’re saying it’s just a matter of some hourly missing data from NWS stations. However, it appears that you do have some hourly data for NWS. I get information for ‘Condition’ ‘Temp’ ‘Sky Cover’ ‘Dew Point’ ‘Humidity’ ‘Humidex’ and ‘Wind Gust’. Looks like just about everything except ‘POP’ shows up for hourly NWS. Wouldn’t it be better to list ‘POP’ as NA (Not Available) instead of 0%?
Good news and bad news. I tried to recreate the issue today and could not completely recreate it. I did get it to happen once but then when I went back to take the screen shots it worked correctly. So I ‘faked’ an image that shows what I was seeing. The forecast on the left would show numbers in ‘POP’ for future hours and days. The forecast on the right (for the exact same periord) would only show 0% in ‘POP’. Which would be understandable if one forecast said 10% and the other 0%. What I saw the other day was 70% vs. 0%.
Let’s see if I’m still following this correctly. What you’re saying is that this past Wednesday when Weather Underground said we had a 70% chance of rain the National Weather Service believed we had a 0% chance? That’s really strange because the NWS had issued a Winter Weather Advisory for our area and predicted that we would have 1-3 inches of snow. Or is 0% from the NWS just because the data is unavailable? If it’s unavailable then the 0% is a little misleading.
No. I’m saying the Earth Networks forecast for that location was showing a 0% chance of rain at that time. That difference is of course according to what you recall seeing. I didn’t have a chance to compare the forecasts myself.
The chance of precipitation is always available. If it’s showing 0%, then that’s what the weather provider is forecasting.
I would respectfully disagree. If NWS is predicting that we should get 1-3 inches of snow the chance of precip should be any number higher than 0%. Yet the whole day all the forecast showed was 0%.
This is not really something you can disagree with… nor am I looking for your approval. I’m simply explaining how the current version of Weather Watcher works. Perhaps I’m not explaining it clearly?
If you use an NWS weather station, Weather Watcher will show you the NWS current conditions for the selected weather station. The forecast data will come from Earth Networks (not NWS). This occurs even when NWS predicts a different forecast or when you see different forecast information on other weather websites.
Why was the precipitation showing 0%? I’m not sure. I can only assume Weather Watcher was showing you the data as forecast by Earth Networks. If you notice something like this again, contact me right away so I can look into it. It’ll be easiest to troubleshoot if I’m able to see the live data.
