Who trusts the weather forecasters? - Forums

Topic starter

Aug 14, 2022

The weather forecast was for clear skies tonight. I'm not sure I agree looking at the plot below. Amazing that I was getting sub 0.5 arc secs through clouds, but the subs were bad even so.

The forecast still says clear skies between 2 am and 4 am ... do I stay up?

David Moore

Aug 14, 2022

Clear skies here in south Devon with the moon rising though. Where do you live?

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Howard Richard

Aug 27, 2022

I use the iPhone Clear Outside app. The weather forecast changes almost hourly. I only attempt to image when there is no chance of rain. I accept the occasional complete loss of data after the autofocus fails secondary to clouds as a cost of sleeping instead of babysitting the images all night long.

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Steve Spring

Aug 27, 2022

Who can trust the weather in the UK fullstop

I use Met Office App, the overnight forecasting is very reliable these days, save for very localised differences in cloud cover which is impossible to predict unless it is absolutely clear across a large area for a long time. I always watch the latest national BBC forecast to put in perspective what the App is showing me.

I find it's good enough for me to leave my rig out overnight. In fact I hardly ever image unless I do, helps to keep my marriage on track

Steve

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kuechlew

Aug 27, 2022

There was a recent interesting discussion of useful weather apps: your experience with weather forecast / apps / accuracy - AstroBin
None of them will have a 100% hit rate when it comes to cloud coverage. My personal summary of the thread for my location in Germany is to check with Clear Outside, Meteoblue and Ventusky. Since the dynamics of weather is subject to the mathematics of chaos theory there always remains some uncertainty. In addition clouds and in particular fog can get influenced heavily by local conditions which may not get represented well in the grid of the weather forecast. In general I'm pleasantly surprised by the accuracy.

Clear skies
Wolfgang

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Gamaholjad

Aug 27, 2022

Mother nature, you figure it out. Personally i stick my head outside and ifvtheres no cloud looking north, back comes the lid on the observatory and away i go.

I do use the weather app on windows 11, seems to be the most accurate for me, but like said mother natute is the boss.

Ferenc Szabo

Sep 12, 2022

One of the most variable and unpredictable weather I been living under is New England, USA. There is an old saying here "If you don't like the weather, wait an hour."

It's very true here, no weather channel or app can predict what's going to happen. They got an approximate idea and sometimes get it right, but just within an hour, their weather forecast can be obsolete. We have storms here out of nowhere and the closest prediction can be as little as 30 minutes before I get a warning on my phone, or they could predict rain and clouds, and when I walk out it clear with not even a puff of cloud in sight.
So I learned to take weather forecasts as the "best guess" but not to put too much trust into it.