Why Weather Apps Are Not Accurate Enough for My Landscape Photography

Rain, fog, red sky, hoar frost, and clouds: all these things are predictable with using apps. The only problem is that the probability that forecasts match reality is embarrassing low. I found a much better solution than I have used for some years now. With this, I’m nearly always fantastically prepared for the weather.
In my latest video about weather prediction for landscape photography, I show the problem with weather apps and even with common weather services. The core problem is that weather services just offer us values like five degrees, rainfall or not, maybe with a probability as a percentage. Some apps offer us even a probability for fog. But, we don’t get more than one version of the weather forecast.

Landscape Photographers Need Accurate Weather for a Specific Point

It is so important to consider that so many weather situations just happen locally to a specific geographical area. Sometimes, a bank of clouds, a rain front, or fog occurs just within a small area of 10 by 10 kilometers or even smaller. Predictions often come earlier or later. But a huge problem is that predictions often shift to different geographical locations. In my experience, this happens even in 70 percent of the cases. 

Why Weather Apps Fail

Common weather services tell us maybe the probability for rain, 60 percent, for instance. But what would happen if the predicted rain front goes a bit more north so that it will not hit us anymore? Weather services don’t tell us how the weather will be otherwise. Weather apps simply don’t give us any scope of interpretation here. We are used to that embarrassing situation, so we don’t care about it. But what if I were to tell you that there is also a way to predict the weather for the missing 40 percent, so that you are always prepared for the weather?

The Forecast Method That Makes It Visible

We don’t need to understand everything about the weather, we don’t need to study. We just need the possibility to make as many versions of the weather prediction visible as possible, to cover most of the possible weather scenarios.

As I looked for more accurate weather forecasts some years ago, I stumbled over the possibility to interpret weather maps. It doesn’t only give us scalar values like degrees, the probability for rain or fog, and so on. It is a visualization of weather vectors that gives us much more scope of interpretation and reveals how the weather will be when the rain front would occur not at our camera position, but more 10 kilometers in the north, or wherever.

In the above-linked video, I show you how weather maps work, how you can read them, while you get many more tips about predicting the weather for your landscape photography so that you are always prepared.