The Dumbing Down Of Weather Forecasting

The AI robots at WordPress suggested the more politically correct title of “Staying Safe Outdoors: Weather Tips for Adventurers” That just didn’t feel right, so after 12 hours of disquiet, I reset the title to my usual level of snark.

If you read this blog regularly the chances are that you regularly enjoy outdoor recreation. Most of us avid skiers and riders would go crazy if we weren’t keeping ourselves busy during the months when ski lifts are not spinning. We’re out there paddling, riding foils, riding single track, cruising pavement or trekking through the woods. All of those endeavors demand that we pay attention to the weather. While the weather happens to be on a nice trend at the moment, all of that can change in an instant.

If you don’t like the weather in the Sierra, just wait 15 minutes. -Every Tahoe local

There’s two weather events this summer that got me thinking about writing this piece. On June 21, a freak summer snow squall hit Lake Tahoe like a freight train. Dozens of boats were beached or capsized. Eight people passed in a tragic event off of DL Bliss State Park. Then on July 4th, flash flooding along the Guadalupe River in Texas took the lives of about 140 people. The big question after these sort of events is whether or not people should have been aware of the dangers and whether proper warnings were given. I’ve been thinking a lot about this over the last month, and I believe that in general, we have become lazy about watching the weather. In essence our primary source of weather awareness has been “dumbed down.”

Back in the day, most of the us would get our information about what is happening with the weather, and what that means for us, from one of two sources: the local TV weather forecaster or the daily newspaper. With the evolution of the internet, that is no longer the case. The number of people still receiving a printed local daily newspaper delivered to their driveway is getting pretty sparse, with most of them being octogenarians living in urban environments. For several reasons, many people have also eschewed watching local television news programs. It’s painful to watch what’s happening in our world, not to mention that our cable TV bill was just not worth the cost.

There’s a whole class of people that don’t pay attention to the weather at all. They figure that they have lived in the region for decades and that things will continue to be the same as we have always seen. But climate change is real and several major sources agree that it’s happening far faster that we ever predicted. When we first moved to Truckee, those 90° summer days were a rare treat. The overnight temperatures made it impossible to grow a tomato outside of a greenhouse. In recent years, we regularly see weeklong spates of 90° plus temperatures in Truckee. We have had at least 8 ripe cherry tomatoes so far this summer. Looking across the rest of the US, those increased temperatures have resulted in more thunderstorms with more flash flooding.

If you are an outdoor adventurer, you really should be getting yourself just a bit more informed about the weather. It might just save you from hitting chain controls on 80 with your summer tires and no chains; showing up for what you thought might be a powder day, but instead was a chowder day; or heading out for a long bike ride or boat excursion with thunderstorms threatening.

I’m not attempting to teach a whole class in meteorology here. My goal here is to offer you some options to find better information, whether that be for skiing and riding in the winter, or for your varied off season activities.

The Worst Of The Worst

The worst of the worst is easy to pick out. It’s the built in weather app on your smart phone. The one I see the most is standard one on iPhones. In watching and listening to friends and family, and perhaps eavesdropping on strangers, this is the only source of weather information they ever use.

I mean it’s not all bad. There’s some good things about the Apple weather app:

• It’s easy to get a very quick view of what might happen today or over the next 10 days in your area
• It’s easy to select additional forecast areas and then scroll back and forth as you travel from one area to another
• Yes, you can scroll lower and find more detailed information such as wind speeds, phases of the moon or the need for sunscreen.
• It’s eerily accurate in some of its short term forecasting. As an example, it might tell you “Rain expected for the next 16 minutes”
• It’s a beautifully refined presentation

Then there’s the bad things about the app, which I believe outweighs the good:

• Most people never scroll down to see any of the details provided
• There is all sorts of esoteric information, as in I just learned that the UV index goes beyond 10. Then again, there’s a lack of good maps to help you understand what may happen with the weather. Initially you see a wind map, which is great if you’re sailing. You can change to a layer that models current precipitation. But there is no option for an actual satellite view, live radar imaging of precipitation or lightning detections. There are also no layers for fronts, high and low pressure systems, the jet stream or other keys that let you understand the weather forecast.
• The forecasts within the app are super volatile. As always, Apple plays its cards very close to the chest – so it’s difficult to know where the app is getting its information. Typically, most of the major weather models update on a 6 hour cycle. There can be some fairly radical updates to the basic automated weather forecast presented as each new weather model updates. The temperatures may fluctuate a dozen degrees from what was shown just hours ago, or the potential for rain or snow may appear and disappear several times in a 24 hour period. The best weather forecasts will look at several model runs before wildly altering their forecasts.
• Ultimately the biggest issue is that the simplicity of the app allowing you to look at weather with a simple tap and a glance at one screen is the largest flaw. We can’t rely on a weather forecast that only takes 5 seconds of our attention.

I am not picking on Apple’s weather app, or the DarkSky app, which Apple bought in 2020 and used as the basis for the current Weather app.

I have not owned an Android phone since 2010, and to be honest, I have not actually even looked at one recently. But doing a quick bit of research this morning, it’s the Google Weather app that most users install on their Android phones. It shares similar flaws to its Apple iOS counterpart. People want a quick and easy thing that just tells them what the weather will be in a quick glance. It’s equally “dumbed down.”

One Step Better: Your Local TV Meteorologist

Yes, we stopped our cable TV subscription more than a year ago, switching to YouTubeTV instead. But two months ago we also ended our subscription to YouTubeTV and the world did not end. In some markets you can get direct digital antenna TV, but not so much here in Tahoe. It turns out that KCRA out of Sacramento offers its full local newscasts on via a free app. They are one of many stations that now offer that service. Even better, you can jump right to the weather forecast segment.

The problem is that not all television weather forecasts are created equally. At worst is the Al Roker style 30 second glance of an entire country’s worth or weather. It’s unbelievable that it’s all some people rely on, that fluff. One step better are the “weather personalities” that are just reading a script and flashing some graphics provided by one of many privatized sources. But the best of the television forecasters are true meteorologists that actually understand that science behind weather. They’re not just reading a script, they are intent on explaining why weather may, or may not, happen. They careful select the graphics that make it all understandable to those of us that did not study meteorology. Here’s two of my favorites in the Sacramento market:

Digging A Bit Deeper: The National Weather Service

Whether you believe it or not, the National Weather Service does an incredible job of forecasting the weather. They have all sorts of historical data and a slew of national models, and various satellite data they use to produce their forecasts. While their most basic “point forecasts” are generated by artificial intelligence and have been for decades, the forecasts that matter are created by humans reviewing all of that data. That would include the things like winter storm warnings, hurricane and tornado warnings and other important things like the aviation forecast.

First let’s talk about the basic “point forecast”.

There’s a lot of useful information about the weather over the next 10 days presented here, and honestly it’s not that bad if this is the only thing you’re going to look at. There’s just a few things to know:

• Because this is a “point forecast”, there are easily a zillion locations in the US being forecast. These forecasts are produced by AI and are not reviewed by a human. They will change about every 6 hours as models are updated. Looking at the forecast today and expecting that forecast to hold through the weekend isn’t advisable,
• Location matters. You can zoom in on the map on the lower right and click a specific location. Note that it even shows specific latitudes and longitudes and elevations. Giving a concrete example, the general low for Truckee last night was 42. At my location we were 36. Elevation matters. Once you refine your location, save that as a bookmark.
• If you are viewing an NOAA point forecast on your phone, click the share icon, which is a square with the arrow pointing up. Then locate “Add to Home Screen” which is generally found under the “More” tab. This will create a little icon “applet” on your phone to go directly to your point forecast.

In your point forecast, you can scroll down to find additional information. On the right are links to satellite images, radar images, maps off precipitation chances and more. On the left you see links to other text products like the Area Forecast Discussion and other text based forecasts and data.

Your Area Forecast Discussions (AFDs) Are Gold

If you like to read and potentially begin to understand weather, reading your area forecast discussions is a great place to start. Again you will find those at the bottom of your point forecast page. The Sierra is covered in part by the Sacramento office of NOAA and the Reno office of NOAA, divided roughly by the Sierra Crest. The Reno office produces two AFDs per day, at roughly 1am and 1pm. The Sacramento office is currently producing one AFD per day at 1pm, thanks to some imbecile that figured there is no weather of concern in the Sacramento valley or west slope of the Sierra.

These discussions are exactly what they sound like, a real meteorologist explaining what may happen in the area and why. Sometimes there may be new terms that you may not understand, but they are generally linked to a glossary page. Today’s forecast discussion is not all that exciting but it does highlight the chance of thunderstorms and increasing winds which you won’t know about from Apple weather or a point forecast.

Here’s some handy links: the Sacramento AFD and the Reno AFD

Getting Nerdy About The Weather

There’s definitely additional resources to learning more about the weather, short of taking a Meteorology 101 course at your local community college. If you’re finding yourself becoming a weather junkie. Here’s some resources to consider:

Open Snow

I would be remiss for not mentioning the Tahoe Daily Snow report at Open Snow, produced by forecaster Bryan Allegretto (or BA). Bryan has been writing about Sierra weather for as long as I have, actually two years longer. He’s a known and mostly trusted source of winter weather information. I stopped following Bryan when he became a part of a paid subscription service. I get it, the guy has to pay his bills. Also, there’s that thing that BA generally only does forecasts while the lifts are spinning at Sierra ski areas.

WeatherWest

Daniel Swain, Ph. D. has been writing a weather blog, now known as Weather West (in place of the California Weather Blog), about California for at least a dozen years and I often encourage you to follow his site. Swain started his site as a teenager with an interest in California weather. Over time, he has earned his doctorate in climate science and is currently one of the leading scientists in studying the accelerating pace of climate change. He’s now located in Boulder CO and working for a slew of different agencies. That means that his blog posts are becoming less frequent. Lately he’s been focusing on “office hours” presentations on YouTube. Still he’s great at painting the big picture of what to expect in terms of seasonal weather.

There’s a large number of regulars that do post commentary on each blog post, and a lot of that can be great information and educational. While most of these participants used to be focused on northern California, as Swain has appeared more often in national news, his fan base has expanded. More recently, the useful parts of the NorCal weather discussion has been diluted by a greater number of posters discussing SoCal weather and even other regions of the country. You have to be willing to sort through a lot of weeds to find the good stuff, akin to Reddit threads.

Mark Finan (formerly of KCRA)

Mark Finan began his weather career at KCRA in 1991. I can remember watching his first forecast, being the first real meteorologist I ever saw doing television weather. He retired in 2024 after a 33 year career at the same station. Without a doubt he is well versed in understanding Sierra weather. Fortunately, although he has left KCRA, he is still forecasting on YouTube. At first he was making new videos every several days, but recently it’s become an every day thing. Each report lasts from 6 to 15 minutes. Finan is an educator as well as a meteorologist. I enjoy his passion for weather.

Storm Radar iOS App

This is one of two of my favorite radar maps for picturing rainfall, snow and hail for Apple iPhones and iPads. The basic version is free and does a very nice job of showing where rain or snow is currently falling, as well as indicating how intense. You can also scroll back in time a couple of hours to see how things have been progressing. If you’re willing to pay for premium service (currently $3.99 a month), you also get a futurecast, satellite images and a few other niceties. The futurecast feature came in super handy when I was doing things like teaching outdoor PE classes or running summer camps.

Note: The “Storm Radar” app for Android is entirely different. Sorry…

Here is the link for Apple iOS devices.

MyRadar iOS App

Why yes, I do have two weather radar imagery apps on my iPhone, thanks for asking. Yes, I am a weather nerd. Why two? The Storm Radar app above is far more useful. But MyRadar does have one magical capability – CarPlay compatibility. You see Apple has this incessant need to keep us safe from our self and that means that moving pictures on your vehicle screen are generally verboten when it comes to CarPlay. But somehow, the folk at MyRadar managed to get it approved for CarPlay. That’s super handy if you’re driving solo and want to know if you’re headed into a snowstorm. Actually I don’t mind driving into a snowstorm. Those summer hailstorms and downpours can be really nasty. It’s also available for Android.

Here is the link for Apple iOS devices.

My Lightning Tracker iOS App

If you are involved in outdoor recreation in the Sierra, you need a lightning tracker app. This is especially true if you were ever a Boy Scout or knew a Boy Scout. The old rule was always taught that if you counted the seconds between lightning and thunder, it would tell you the mileage from the storm. Count 5 seconds and that storm is 5 miles away, right? Wrong. Light travels five times faster than sound. So a 5 second count means the lightning is one mile away. Most people suggest lightning can travel 10 miles from the source, so unless you are counting to 50 – you’re in danger. It’s far safer to have an app for that.

It used to be that lightning was only a really worry during the summer season in the Sierra. We used to see lightning snow maybe once a season. Last season it was more like seven different days that we had lightning holds. This is our new reality. I don’t really want to test out just how well grounded the chairlift is in a storm! Several times when holds were called last season, I used the app to see the location of recent strikes. Mountain ops had it correct every time.

Here is the link for Apple iOS devices.

Thanks for taking the time to learn a little bit more about weather. We all have a responsibility to look a little farther than our basic weather app on our phones if we want to be safe in the Sierra, or anywhere outdoors.

We are now at 99 days from the typical opening date for Alpine Meadows and our northern neighbor. Mount Rose and Mammoth typically open two weeks earlier than that. Schools are starting to return to session and Burning Man is just around the corner. The excitement is building. I am still planning on skiing in 52 days. I can’t wait.