As the time soon approaches to our Rally, I begin to look at the long range weather forecasts. One thing I repeatedly keep seeing is the term Isolated thunderstorms, and I wonder just what does that mean. So I did a google search and I came up with this. It is interesting and so I thought I would share it with the rest of you.

National Weather Service forecasters will forecast "isolated" thunderstorms when we are pretty certain that storms are going to form, but we only expect them to affect about 10% of the area. In other words, 90% of the area won't get wet.

Just so you know, when our forecast says...

"Widely scattered thunderstorms", it means 20% of the area will be affected.
"Scattered thunderstorms" means 30-50% of the area will be affected.
"Thunderstorms likely" means 60-70% of the area will be affected.
and if we just say "Thunderstorms", we expect that 80-100% of the area will see rain.

Problems arise, however, when that isolated thunderstorm happens to develop over the most populated city in the area. When that happens, most of the people get wet, even though only a small area received rain. So to many people, forecasters are "wrong" even when we are "right"!


alepel

"Ride with the Spirit always, and in all ways"....hombldr