I know that the technology can bring us pictures of what is occurring but are the predictions more accurate? Or has its chaotic nature still not well understood?
I don't know, but I do know this: Back in 2004, when we lived 28 miles south of downtown Denver, Colorado, I had just got home from work at 4PM and turned on a local Denver news station. The weather came on and the person was saying how beautiful it was there, sunny and all. I looked outside a front window of our house and it looked like a full-blown blizzard was going on. Heavy snow falling and very windy. Apparently, this storm had come from the south, hit us and hadn't made it to Denver yet. But, the weatherman didn't say a word about any snow heading there!
I would say that it depends on where you live. Some areas are naturally more difficult to forecast than others. Out in the plains states, you see the stuff coming and there are no obstacles. Short-term accuracy has gotta be high. Here in Virginia, we have the Atlantic on one side and mountains on the other. There are tons of variables and disruptions. If I recall an article I recently read on this subject, forecasts are now made much further out and with a greater degree of accuracy...but I forget the details. Heck, I'm looking at the website I use and there are forecasts out to Wednesday Feb 10.
Our snow predictions go and come. One day it will show snow showers next week and the next day that forecast changes to zero. Then, a prediction of an inch or two of snow and we could get as much as 9 inches.
I give a resounding "No!" to the posed question. There have been articles in the last few years that say the same. In my youth, in Chicago, we had great weather man forecasters on TV. These guys could stick their heads out the window, take a look at the sky, and give a forecast that was spot on. Nowadays, I listen to the meteorologists on TV who show a ton of fancy, digital screens, and make these grandiose prognostications that are on the money about half the time, and miss by a mile, the other half. What irritates me is they NEVER apologize for their totally off the mark predictions. They simply change their latest broadcast to go along with what's currently out my window, and not what they predicted! Yeah, that irritates me....
I used to work with weather in the military and our prediction percentage was about 75% correct. I checked a few years ago, and the prediction percentage had dropped to 50%. We didn't try to predict out 10 days or anything, but I have sent communications to some local folks suggesting they don't try to predict that far out as it is invariably wrong, at least in this location. They can usually predict the next day, but the accuracy drops badly after that. When we did forecasting, a fair amount was done on human experience and "gut", e.g., if it rains in this location, it will rain here in 2 days. Now they rely almost totally on algorithms and satellites, and they have decommissioned many of the upper air monitoring systems, relying on algorithms instead. Here many of the forecasters say their algorithms don't work well in El Nino years, or they don't work in La Nina years, etc., and Alaska, especially the Southcentral region, is very difficult due to mountains, big water, etc. and if they miss a wind direction by a few degrees, a wet period may become a dry period. If they miss the temp prediction at the transition between the water and the mountains, snow can become rain, freezing precip, or rain can become snow. In conclusion, I would say that the forecasts are much less reliable than they were 50 years ago, at least for 72 hours out, as we did not try to go further than that.
I went to bed at 2AM and checked the forecast from NOAA/National Weather Service and from Weather Underground. Both were calling for rain to start at 5AM today (within 3 hours of the time I looked at the forecast) and keep raining until 10AM tomorrow, Total Accumulation 2 1/2". I got up this morning and there have been sprinkles, but the real rain is now forecast to start at 4PM, Total Accumulation 1/4" to 1/2". The original [bad] forecasts had been there all day long. I understand that Virginia has the challenge of mountains on one side and the Atlantic on the other, either of which can be significant disruptors. But there are degrees of reasonableness.
Who knows? Predicting is thousands of years old, and might not be any better than it ever was ? Matthew 16:2-3 But He replied to them, "When it is evening, you say, 'It will be fair weather, for the sky is red.' And in the morning, 'There will be a storm today, for the sky is red and threatening.'
I think some of the excuses for weather prediction error are valid, but one forecaster told a friend of mine in Virginia that weather was difficult to predict there because there was a river in Virginia. Really? That could be a canned excuse for every state. There could be a reason for error for weather coming off the ocean if you were in the Virginia mountains, but there should be few problems with weather systems coming from the west.
I think the problems with the weather coming in from the west are because the mountains disrupt them. Or am I wrong? You worked in the field...I have not.
Mountains disrupt the system, but that can be accounted for in the algorithm if there is no large bodies of water nearby, as the mountains don't move. Water temperature changes however. The flow through the mountains could, however, affect the weather in a specific location (microclimate) but not an entire region. Just my thoughts. Forecasters always have to have an excuse to be wrong about 50% of the time. Could you be wrong at whatever you do (or did) and still keep your job?
So just to further this for my own edification (because I've always wondered)...Virginia has several mountain ranges (of varying size) to the west, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Does that complicate forecasting? To what degree? Regarding being wrong and keeping my job...only if I were the boss and didn't run out of underlings to blame!