Where to go for weather forecasts?

Friends and family often ask me for forecasts. Sometimes it's a joke and sometimes they really do want to know what the weather is going to be. I imagine doctors get "hey can you take a look at this rash real quick?" from their family, and maybe folks who studied accounting get asked to review friends' taxes every once in while... And you don't always feel like it. So I tell them where I get my weather forecasts instead. What? You thought I spend the time to make a good and accurate forecast every day? There are people who do that professionally and I'm not one of them (as of yet, anyway, although I am theoretically qualified). And the key word here is PEOPLE.

Lots and lots and lots of people use weather.com and accuweather.com. These are AUTOMATED sites. Their forecasts are not vetted by real people. I believe it was perhaps two or three years ago during a cold snap that weather.com forecast a low of minus five degrees for Seattle. Yes, five degrees below zero FAHRENHEIT. Any human knows that that was a completely unreasonable forecast (it has never been below zero in Seattle). These sites do OK during normal weather - which often gives many people the impression that they are reliable and accurate - but they break big time when there is unseasonable or extreme weather. And those are the times when you really need a good forecast!

My local WFO (Weather Forecast Office) webpage. Space to input your location circled in red, link to forecast discussion in yellow.

So where should you look? I recommend the National Weather Service - weather.gov. Humans still add value to forecasts and the humans at the NWS are all highly educated and have been trained on the job as well. They are the experts, and nearly all private forecasting services use the information from the NWS. From the front page, click on your region of the country to go to your local forecast office's homepage, or type in your location in the upper left corner of the webpage. If you want to read a more detailed forecast and the reasoning behind it, go your local office's forecast discussion. It can get technical, but if you really want to dig in to all the possibilities of how the weather is going to evolve, what's most likely and why, this is the place.

If you want more of a layman's discussion, go to the website of your favorite local news channel. Yep! Their forecast won't be much different from the NWS because they're getting a lot of their information from them anyway, but it's their job to communicate in straightforward terms to the public and show clean, easy to understand graphics. Take heed though, every once in a while I see local news channel forecasters getting a little sensational - especially when there is snow in the forecast (in Seattle). They are less likely to talk about uncertainty.

Just please, don't let me catch you checking weather.com.