On Sunday, 26 May 2013 06:41:29 UTC+12, Graham P Davis wrote:
Graham P Davis, Bracknell, Berks.

The met. agency here uses essentially a similar kind of "relativistic" scale in the descriptive part of its temperature forecasting. The MetService website report on current conditions in the towns covered cites actual temperature, "feels like" temperature, and a clothing layers suggestion. I think that's fairly useful. But no system can ever hope to make sense to all, given the large range of human physiological responses possible, IMO.

For me "showers" occur in situations where there is (a) intermittency - gaps between rainfalls, as well as variations in the cloud cover or cloud thickness;

(b) Some convective activity. A rather marginal case here would be if a cold southerly airflow is delivering mainly overcast skies with fairly limited convective activity and "passing showers" with not much lightening of the skies during the breaks.

If I can figure out from local knowledge plus forecast when it will/won't rain, (and an idea of intensity of any rain) as well as when any sunny part of the day is expected, I'm happy to ignore any deficiencies in the forecasting accuracy.