I understand that weather on TV can’t be hyperlocally accurate. But a weather app on my phone has my exact GPS coordinates. Why can’t it tell me exactly when a rain cloud will be passing over my location?

It’s gotten to the point where I just use precipitation maps to figure out my rain chances for the day.

The hourly forecast is mostly useless because it’s not a chance % but a % of the area that will be raining.

  • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Nearby is so highly dependent on where exactly those are located, and what they’re connected to (some are handled by local volunteers that have hardware that reports periodically as opposed to being operated by an agency directly). Various apps don’t all connect to the same data sources.

    Official reporting locations may not actually be close to you and weather can be highly localized. A mile can make a massive difference in weather in some regions, and the official recording location for the city is 10 miles away.