Clouds are unknowable and any attempt to predict them more than a few days in advance will be met only with suffering
The site this screenshot comes from, SpotWx, is actually really awesome for looking at weather forecasts in detail. (Most of their models are only for North America, sorry Europeans).
Ugh. Why did ‘yellow text on white background’ not strike the creator of this as a bad idea?
Yeah sorry, that was a bad decision on my part. I changed it to a more orangeish color that's way easier to see.
Yes, way better. Thanks!
The last one is worse than 50/50? They should invert the forecast!
Sadly there are many states clouds can take other than present or not present. As we try to guess what type of cloud will be present (or not present) in any given location for any period of time. Is it a rain cloud, a high cloud? A low cloud? Very low clouds? Is it a lot or a few? It's the sun obscured from view? Will there a be a light breeze? Or one that bends the trees? Will thunder crack and boom? Should I hide in my room? There's many ways weather can be, so it's never 50/50
There are several possible values for cloud covering extent. Forecasts usually have either 4 or 8 of them.
(And yeah, thinking about it, 8 different values is pure madness.)
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Op is clearly not from the US midwest. All of the predictions are mental illness here
I actually am. :) In my experience the cloud cover models are usually decently accurate to a couple days in the future, especially when the predicted cloud cover is near the upper or lower extremes and all the models agree. It's pretty uncommon for it to be completely wrong and get overcast conditions when a clear sky was predicted, or vice versa. (Though it does happen; I remember checking the predictions a day ahead and seeing clear skies, only for it to be overcast and raining the next day).
My best advice was from a friend of mine about 30 years ago
He was far older than me and he just told me .... the forecast? ... just open the door and step outside ... is it raining? yes? no? ... is it sunny? yes? no? ... is it snowing? yes? no? ... is it windy? yes? no? ... has the apocalypse arrived? yes? no?
that's all the forecasting you need.
Sort of like the Weather Rock idea.
Exactly
My best memory of my old friend was when me and couple of friends were sitting in my backyard with all our painting equipment. I was getting ready to paint the whole house but we were worried about rain. There were dark clouds in part of the sky, and we couldn't figure out if the weather report was going to forecast rain in our area or not. We were all debating that it was going to rain so we better not start ... while also saying that this is the only day we had time to do all this work.
My old friend Barry (we called him Bud) just laughed at us all .... grabbed a brush, opened a can of paint and started painting. He said it's not raining right now so you'd better start .... and if it does start raining, you can stop.
It trickled rain for a little bit and we stopped mid afternoon .... but by the end of the day, we finished painting the house.
Thanks Bud ... I follow his forecasting logic all the time now.