How Weather Forecasting Works in the U.S.: From Sky-Watching to Supercomputers.
How Weather Forecasting Works in the U.S.: From Sky-Watching to Supercomputers. Overview Weather forecasting in the United States is a team sport. It blends physics, statistics, machine learning, and the daily hustle of meteorologists from the National Weather Service (NWS), private companies, and local TV stations. I think of it like planning a cross-country road trip with ever-changing traffic: you gather reports from miles ahead, check cameras, run routing apps, then decide whether to take the scenic route or the express lane. The goal isn’t just pretty maps—it’s timely, actionable decisions that help Americans choose coats, protect crops, keep planes on time, and prepare for hurricanes or blizzards . 1) Observations: taking Earth’s pulse (U.S. flavor) Surface networks: Thousands of Automated Surface Observing Systems (ASOS/AWOS) at airports, plus mesonet stations in states like Oklahoma and New York, log temperature, pressure, wind, humidity, visibility, and...