Eric Floehr, the founder and CEO of ForecastWatch, was recently interviewed by The Wall Street Journal about why weather apps can’t get the forecast right.
With technology becoming even more powerful, like the creation of driverless vehicles and human-sounding chatbots, why are weather apps still so unreliable?
Weather forecasts have gotten better over the past few decades. A 7 day forecast is now accurate about 80% of the time. But at 10 days out, accuracy drops to about 50%.
When asked why that is, Eric says we still don’t have perfect knowledge of the atmosphere. He also adds that weather models predict weather partly based on historical patterns, and the models have trouble predicting extreme outliers, which seem to be occurring more frequently as the climate changes.
To help the public have a better read on the weather, Eric created ForecastAdvisor, a sister product to ForecastWatch, which lists the most accurate weather providers based on zip code or city.
Hopefully by using ForecastAdvisor and by better understanding what weather apps are trying to tell them, the public will be more informed and prepared when weather strikes.
