whatever happened to NOAA weather forecasts???

... once upon a time i thought those guys were 'fairly' reliable, then i attributed their poor forecasts to budget cuts, now it just seems like they're smoking crack ...

I mean something is smoking…

I guess your tax dollars are going towards this so there is some level of legitimate gripe, however small it may be, but there are innumerable resources to easily interpret the dozens of weather models out there. Meteoblue, Breezy, SpotWx to name a few. Figure it out.

Try taking in a detailed NOAA forecast...

https://www.wrh.noaa.gov/total_forecast/getprod.php?prod=XXXAFDMTR&wfo=MTR

I think they just roll a 20 sided dice  like in dungeons and dragons.

Reminds of the ~2008 Great Recession.  I recall a statement that the quality of weather forecasts would decline as weather-related satellite launches were being cancelled.

Wonder if the USA already recovered from that. Satellites are long lead purchases.

I have noticed that lots of smoke messes with the models. This time of year in the mountains when temps come up you’d expect to see afternoon t-storms. But they aren’t developing as much because smoke is blocking the surface warming required to energize the storms. The automated outputs, especially for point forecasts, have been… interesting.

Also worth noting, weather forecasts use a lot of observation data from commercial flights. The reduction in flights has meant less data to feed into the models.

No doubt, years of cuts and political antagonism have hurt the noaa, but this is a hard situation to forecast. 

I noticed the same "steady temperature around" language in the Longs Peak forecast over the weekend. It went away when I refreshed the forecast.

John Oliver clip is great & reflection of previous administration.  Won’t go there.  I’ve also noticed  wider variability in weather forecasts for west coast which doesn’t have the complexities of east coast forecasting which is more difficult to rely on.  Ability to predict smoke seems to be 24-48 hour window which is frustrating for planning trips.  

Move to WNC where you only check the weather when it doesn't rain and you're confused. 

"jeeze why can't these guys just predict the future like I want them to"

I think you can pin-sharpie-point when NOAA bottomed out

Am I missing something? What’s wrong with this forecast?

Ben Mwrote:

Am I missing something? What’s wrong with this forecast?

My question as well. If the "steady temperature" is 83, then by definition the low would be 83.

As to the question posed in the subject: they've gotten exponentially better over the past decade.

Ben Mwrote:

Am I missing something? What’s wrong with this forecast?

My bet is that the temperature prediction for the Monday night low is "what's wrong with this forecast."  Very wrong.  Was anybody in Tuolumne last night who can say?

Ben Mwrote:

Am I missing something? What’s wrong with this forecast?

The forecast of "steady temperature around 83" for evenings in the Meadows is implausible since temps drop quite a bit when the sun goes down.

Looks like actual low was in the 50s:

https://www.localconditions.com/weather-tuolumne-meadows-california/ca906/past.php

I e-mailed NOAA in August and received this reply:

There was an apparent problem with the NDFD server in College Park, MD at that time as there were grids from several offices that had issues for the first two days of the forecast.  The problem has since been resolved.

I have no idea what that means, but it seems NOAA is aware of the issue and has fixed it. I haven't seen it recur with the Longs Peak forecast.