What are they thinking?

As a pilot we are concerned with the effects of weather.  The forecasts are occasionally accurate.  They can tell us if we need an umbrella but the height of the clouds at exactly 10 o'clock is much more difficult to predict accurately.  There are many sources for weather information but I tend to use national weather service products to build my situational picture and use flight service as a sanity check.  

  When we call flight service and request a weather briefing there are three flavors: standard, abbreviated or outlook.  The standard briefing gives us the whole nine yards.  The abbreviated briefing is used when we only want certain types of information.  An example of this would be when the winds are a concern and that is all I really care about.  Generally we have already gotten a standard briefing earlier and just need an update.  The outlook briefing is for periods six hours or more in the future.  

  The forecasters are in a room with no windows, tossing chicken bones and rolling dice.  Not really but the farther into the future they predict the less accurate the forecast.  The cynic in me says "Beyond six hours they are just guessing."  It is a SWAG, not a WAG.  A Wild Ass Guess vs a Scientific Wild Ass Guess.  Many times we wonder aloud "What were they thinking?"  

  The area forecast discussion is, indeed, what they are thinking.  It has several sections: synopsis, near term, short term, long term and aviation.  I focus on the synopsis and the aviation portions.  This product, as its name implies, is the forecasters discussing the weather and the reasoning behind their forecast.  A better understanding of the soup in which I fly may allow me to live longer and happier.  Sometimes the forecaster will say "this is a difficult system to predict, this is what I think will happen but confidence is not high."   The hyperlinks located throughout the product elaborate on technical terms and abbreviations.  Sometimes the term makes sense to me and other times it merely points out another area of ignorance.  

  I understand that very intelligent people are throwing the best technology at a very complex problem.  I also understand that the cold front did not read the forecast and the weatherman is not in a tiny aluminum tube.  When the forecast does not match reality I like to say "What he meant to say was..."  I also tend to give a PIREP, which is another subject.  

Have fun, be safe.

Ronney