Predicting Local Weather

A reader, Mrs. L. Hollister, reports that a neighbor lady claims to be fairly successful in predicting local wind conditions by observing the nature of the clouds in certain directions from her house. The question is whether such claims make sense and why is it that one sometimes can do better than the experts in predicting weather.

To some extent everyone learns to be an expert on the weather that affects them directly. A person interested in gardening worries about frost and learns within a few years whether his garden location is likely or not to suffer a frost if a frost warning is given. Those who launch rockets from the Poker Flat Research Range have learned to pay attention to weather forecasts, but they have found that nighttime skies are usually clearer than Weather Service predicts.

It does seem true that an observant, self-taught weather watcher can do rather well in many instances, especially if he or she remains in one location for a long time. Official weather forecasts are usually for a general area. Since conditions vary even within a few miles, one can use one's own observations to improve the official forecasts for a specific location.