http://www.rbwaters.com wrote:

Joseph, this is off topic, but it should still make it through the spam
block.
I found your assessment of the song "American Pie" by Don McLean very
interesting and illuminating.

Thank you. Yes - it is off-topic and you could simply e-mail me.

Maybe you are trying to tell me I should write about pop music instead of
weather ? Yes, I overpredicted the thunderstorm potential, but American
Pie almost certainly includes nothing about Kennedy also. So one incorrect
comment about weather is no worse IMO than one incorrect comment about that.
My post about the previous day's weather was basically correct.

Regardless, my primary purpose for that post is to note how the hourly
precipitation probabilities in TWC forecasts are misleading. If you look
at them, you'll see that the highest probability for any hour of the daytime
period corresponds with the total daytime probability on their daily forecasts.
That is fundamentally incorrect from a statistical view. Even during a day
when showers are likely, the probability for any particular hour is quite low.
It doesn't rain all day. My post about the Gettysburg trip is a good example
of this. As I mentioned, TWC forecast maps would lead you to believe we'd
have basically a showery day - but it was a beautiful day, perhaps with a
brief period of late day or evening showers. That was long after we left,
so I don't know what they saw. I.e., the probability of rain while we were
touring the battlefield, etc. most of the day was very low - maybe 10 % for
any hour - but I bet TWC forecast had something like 60 % for each of those
hours.


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