Why Weather Websites Suck

I've complained about weather websites before, but I want to do it again. First, the NWS really needs to improve their text. For years, they've done the same thing over and over. Sure, they have better equipment, make better predictions, but they still disseminate the information the same way they always have, which is in ALL-CAPS with ... everywhere. It's as if they predicted IM text (except they use all-caps).

I find that the weather, as told by meteorologists get at what I want. First, I want to know what the weather is like now. Is it raining? Is it sunny? Second, I want to know if there is rain, when it's likely to arrive, and if it's raining now, when it's likely to stop.

weather.com has an hour by hour prediction of temperature, and they are usually pretty good. But, I want a side-by-side live temperature, to see how far the prediction was off, or a history of the prediction, for a given time.

For example, at for 2 PM, April 3rd, it might say rain at 11 PM, April 2nd. By 8 AM, April 3, they may have revised their predictions to say "cloudy". Obviously, as you get closer, the prediction will be more accurate. I want a sense of how bad these predictions are.

Instead, once the time passes, they don't bother tracking the weather. There was a prediction of rain all afternoon and evening two days ago. It was sunny and windy instead. How often do they botch this up? There should be a number to track this and then explain why it went wrong. It will let the people watching weather to get a sense of what's going on.

Part of this accuracy depends on the NWS, and how often they update their information to the public.

We depend on weather, and yet I wonder if the NWS has looked to improve how it presents this information people depend on.