Our Best Places to Live reports are unique in that they use a combination of forecast accuracy from various weather providers and an assumption that the current weather will continue over the next several days to determine where the weather is most and least predictable in the short term.
This information can benefit your business if you need to know where the weather is most predictable, help you conduct outdoor activities if you live in a place with more unpredictable weather, or even help you plan your next vacation!
Our reports analyze thousands of locations throughout the United States, Europe, and the world to rank them from most to least predictable. In some of our previous blogs, we looked at some of the best places to live if you need to know what the weather will be like tomorrow. Now, we’re going to look at some of the worst places to live if you need accurate weather forecasts.
Our study analyzed high temperatures, low temperatures, and precipitation for 843 locations in the United States. The least accurate combination of forecasts and persistence exists across the Northern Plains and upper Midwest, as well as portions of the interior Northeast United States, with an average accuracy of less than 55%. These more inland locations are both farther from large bodies of moderating water and are exposed to a variety of frontal boundaries and air masses that can change weather conditions quickly, making persistence a bad indicator of coming weather and accurate forecasts tougher to make. Northern Alaska is also in the least accurate group, partly due to the lack of observations that make forecasting difficult.
We also analyzed 555 locations across Europe for the same parameters. Northeast Sweden and far northwest Finland were found to have accuracy of less than 55%. The least accurate areas included locations near the Gulf of Bothnia and Barents Sea. Their far north location near the Arctic Circle results in large variations in sunlight duration throughout the year, and their lack of exposure to the Gulf Stream and prevailing westerlies (due in part to the Kjølen Mountains) leads to more varying temperatures. A relative lack of observations in this northern region also leads to more inaccurate forecasts, as computer models depend on current observations. Greenland is home to the least accurate location because of its sparse observations and northern location.
When taking a look at the world as a whole, we analyzed high temperatures, low temperatures, and precipitation for 1944 locations. Combined accuracy of less than 55% was found along the southern Chile coast, most of Canada (outside the coasts), the extreme Northern Plains of the U.S., western Greenland, much of Siberia, extreme northwest China, Kazakhstan, and Mongolia. These least accurate combinations of forecasts and persistence were generally in polar and inland locations. Locations on the east side of large continents such as the United States and Eurasia saw less accuracy than the west side of the same continents, because they are less exposed to the moderating effects of the oceans to the west, with jet streams and weather systems largely flowing west to east outside of the tropics. This is also seen to a lesser extent in the Southern Hemisphere with South America and Australia, smaller continents with less west to east extent.
To download and read our full reports, visit https://forecastwatch.com/services/best-places-reports/.
