I have a very Anglo Saxon question. I am a serious weather geek and have been following the weather forecast for Rome over the last several months, for no practical purposes of course, however, I am being frustrated by a seemingly lack of consensus in the European weather forecast community.

For example, weather.com, weather underground, bbc weather and metcheck.com are forcasting the following weather on Feb. 20, 2004 for Rome:
Weather.com: 45°F/25°F
Weather underground: 48/41
BBC: 48/30
Metcheck.com: 43/41
And I won't mention Corriere delle Sera, which appears to treat forecasting as a practical joke. But it's not funny to me!

I know, I have too much time on my hand, but anyone else share my obsession? Who do you trust for weather forecasting in Italy?

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Originally posted by bubba:
Who do you trust for weather forecasting in Italy?

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No-one. it's not just that weather forecasts in Italy are unrealieable, it's that Italian weather forecast experts often explain that weather forecasts in Europe are unreliable at best, even when done by the best experts. It depends by several factors, the only two that I can understand is that our orography is far more complicated than the USA's and that we are the crossrads of a good deal of different major weather influences, each one of these battling constantly with the others. The result is that our climate lacks the extreme phenomena that exists somewhere lese in the world (blizzards, tornadoes, hurricanes, monsoons, etc.), but it is much more unpredictable. The other result of this is that the best way of forecasting weather in Italy is wait until things happen. Wetend to rely much more on getting up, looking out of the window and hoping that the weather doesn't hcnage too much throughout the day than on listening to forecasts.

bubba,
I believe that if you checked three or four different weather forecast sites for any given city in the US, you'd also find disparate results. Meteorology is an inexact science.

Good luck finding a reliable source... and if you do, please pass it on to the rest of us!

We used to have a saying in St. Louis, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute." You could get four different forecasts there and at some point during the day, they could all be correct.

I agree that weather forecast is an inexact science, after all, I am a weather geek (really! I read jet stream map every few hours ) But in the US, the forecasters are usally all wrong or all right, which leads me to believe it's based on the same forecasting model.

Just for the record, Europe isn't that way. This is the current forecast for Rome 2/20/04:
Weather.com: 50°F/30°F
Weather underground: 55/50
BBC: 62/44
Metcheck.com: 55/51

I think if you are travling to Rome you should bear in mind to check a couple of weather sources. Or you could just not care.

I can definitely tell you that there is no way the temperature in Rome can be below freezing. It has been that cold in a couple of weeks.

Maybe the inaccuracies are due to them inaccurately converting from C to F.
I doubt it, but who knows.

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Originally posted by Kim:

We used to have a saying in St. Louis, "If you don't like the weather, wait a minute." You could get four different forecasts there and at some point during the day, they could all be correct.

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What do you mean "used to"?
We still have that saying. In fact, a couple of weeks ago, all four major network stations forcasted a major blizzard. The blizzard was more like a dusting. They got a lot of grief from St. Louisians for that one. One of them went on the air wearing a dunce cap the next day. She said she had received more derisive e-mails in 12 hours than in her entire previous 5 years in St. Louis. St. Louisians tend to talk back at their newscasters. The school districts who called off school for the day, were not very happy.

Deborah - was it Trish, the weather bunny? That's what Chris used to call her.

Indeed it was.