This will ruin my plans for the weekend
It doesn’t look good for my outdoor weekend plans. I was planning on spending most of Saturday and Sunday outside taking out tree stumps, killing some weeds, mowing, weedeating, and generally cleaning shop. And Katie is going to spend the weekend horseshowing.
A front will move across the area late Saturday and Sunday, bringing thunderstorms and possibly large hail and strong gusty winds, according to the National Weather Service.
Is the hail really necessary? And this, too:
A stormy wake-up call is predicted for Saturday morning, with a 40 percent chance of showers and thunderstorms. It will be mostly cloudy during the day with a high near 87. Wind gusts may be as high as 20 mph.
But doesn’t a forty percent chance of rain mean it’s still more likely than not that it won’t rain? I never can figure these things out. If it’s more than 20% chance of rain, people expect rain. It must be fun being a meteorologist.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
When a forecast says there’s a 40 percent chance of rain, it means that any place in the area covered by the forecast has a 40% chance of measurable rain. So your house could get x minutes of rain on Saturday, and we might not get any, the forecast is still correct, though we got no rain but you did.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:01 pm
Yes, a forty percent chance of rain means that in one hundred days with conditions exactly like this, it rained during forty of those days. So, it is more than likely that it will NOT rain.
May 29th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Right, but it seems like we all take 40% to mean 80%.
The article said we’re going to get rain, and on a whole that’s true, but if the forecast is correct, more people won’t get rain than those who do.
May 30th, 2008 at 9:43 am
I was going to work on a chain link fence. I don’t think I want to be holding on to something metal if there is going to an electrical storm. I also don’t want to get pelted in the head with a chunck of ice. On the flat lands of the prarie you could see these things coming from 3 miles off. Here in the hills you can’t see it till it is on top of you.
tg
May 30th, 2008 at 9:47 am
Yeah, chain link in a thunderstorm could become a bad thing real quick.
May 30th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
40%??? 80%???. I have come to conclude that no one can get the weather right around here. Once it hits the valley it does all sorts of weird things.
tg