Re:rain? (Score 1)

Intellovations (my company) does collect lots of forecasts including probability of precipitation forecasts. One was even published by CustomWeather.

There are two measures of POP forecasts: accuracy, and resolution. The published study only measured accuracy. Measuring accuracy means verifying it rained 20% of the time the forecast said 20% chance of rain. Resolution means how useful the POP forecasts are. Since it it rains/snows about 30% of the time, always predicting 30% chance rain or snow is 100% accurate, but useless. A perfectly useful POP forecast would always predict either 0% or 100% for any given point. A perfectly useful and accurate POP forecast would always predict either 0% or 100% for any given point, and be right 100% of the time. Real POP forecasts fall somewhere in the middle.

You can check out more at the sites ForecastAdvisor.com and ForecastWatch.com.

-Ace